Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Smell and Taste Clinic and Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, University of Dresden Medical School, Dresden, Germany.
Emotion. 2011 Dec;11(6):1331-5. doi: 10.1037/a0024437. Epub 2011 Jul 25.
The sense of olfaction is often reported to have a special relationship with emotional processing. Memories triggered by olfactory cues often have a very emotional load. On the other hand, basic negative or positive emotional states should be sufficient to cover the most significant functions of the olfactory system including ingestion, hazard avoidance, and social communication. Thus, we investigated whether different basic emotions can be evoked in healthy people through the sense of olfaction. We asked 119 participants which odor evokes one of the six basic emotions (happiness, disgust, anger, anxiety, sadness, and surprise); another 97 participants were asked about pictures evoking those emotions. The results showed that almost every participant could name an olfactory elicitor for happiness or disgust. Olfactory elicitors of anxiety were reported less frequently, but they were still reported by three-quarters of the participants. However, for sadness and anger only about half of the participants reported an olfactory elicitor, whereas significantly more named a visual cue. Olfactory emotion elicitors were mainly related to the classes of culture, plants, and food, and visual emotion elicitors were largely related to humans. This data supports the hypothesis that in the vast majority of people, few differentiated emotions can be elicited through the olfactory channel. These emotions are happiness, disgust, and anxiety.
嗅觉通常被认为与情感处理有着特殊的关系。嗅觉线索引发的记忆往往带有很强的情感负荷。另一方面，基本的消极或积极情绪应该足以涵盖嗅觉系统的最重要功能，包括摄取、避免危险和社交交流。因此，我们研究了通过嗅觉是否可以在健康人群中引发不同的基本情绪。我们询问了 119 名参与者哪种气味能引发六种基本情绪（快乐、厌恶、愤怒、焦虑、悲伤和惊讶）之一；另外 97 名参与者被要求描述能引发这些情绪的图片。结果表明，几乎每个参与者都能说出一种能引起快乐或厌恶的嗅觉刺激物。焦虑的嗅觉刺激物报告的频率较低，但仍有四分之三的参与者报告了这种嗅觉刺激物。然而，对于悲伤和愤怒，只有大约一半的参与者报告了嗅觉刺激物，而明显更多的人报告了视觉线索。嗅觉情绪刺激物主要与文化、植物和食物有关，而视觉情绪刺激物则主要与人类有关。这些数据支持了这样一种假设，即在绝大多数人中，通过嗅觉通道可以引发几种不同的情绪，这些情绪是快乐、厌恶和焦虑。
