Scents and smells are all around us: at the park, in the zoo, or on the beach. But what kind of role do these smells play in our lives?
The nose’s job is to smell. A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people’s moods, and even affect their work performance, according to howstuffworks.com.
“I can still remember different smells from when I was younger,” Janine Miehlke, junior, said. “It’s so nice to smell something and you feel like you’re back in those memories.”
According to the article “Can you really smell memories?” from mailonline.com, past studies have shown that memories triggered by smells are more vivid and more emotional than those triggered by sounds, pictures, or words.
Humans can recognize thousands of different smells, but each person enjoys different types of scents or smells.
“I am definitely a floral person when it comes to scents,” Lisa Thode, sophomore, said. “Because every flower, whether it’s sweet pea or lilac, each have their unique smell, but they all have a sweet smell to them.”
Stores like Yankee Candle or Bath and Body Works have many variations of smells that can bring people back memories of an old camp fire or skipping in a field of flowers.
“I love going into perfume, lotion, or candle shops,” Miehlke said. “It’s so much fun to just go around and smell all of the different scents and choose the ones you love.”
Other than making noses happy, scents and smells may also be a big factor in sexual attraction between two people. Psychologist Estelle Campenni is living proof of how smell leads to attraction.
“I knew I would marry my husband the minute I smelled him,” Campenni wrote in “Scents and Sensibility” in Psychology Today Magazine. “His scent made me feel safe . . . and I’m talking about his real body smell, not cologne or soap. I’d never felt like that from a man’s smell before.”
Studies show the people we are actually attracted to possess few of the traits we claim to want, according to psychologytoday.com. Some researchers think scent could be the hidden cosmological constant in the sexual universe, the missing factor that explains who we end up with. It may even explain why we feel “chemistry”—or “sparks” or “electricity”—with one person and not with another.
“When guys wear good smelling cologne, it makes them more attractive because they smell good and you just want to be by them,” Thode said. “For example, I just love when I pass people in the hall and I can smell their after-shave.”
The relationship between smell and attraction is not yet proven, but smelling good will do you no harm.