Uniwersytet Swps

Odors and olfactory preferences provide helpful information in a variety of contexts, including social interactions, food intake and threat detection. Given the importance of the sense of smell, it is likely that odor perception is at least partially determined and affected by universal mechanisms and factors. In this podcast, Professor Sorokowask summarizes the cross-cultural research she conducted with her collaborators on a variety of odor perception-related issues. First, she presents the results showing that air pollution affects olfactory acuity. However, it is likely that there are also some modern evolutionary pressures that may significantly increase olfactory abilities of certain members of traditional societies. Second, she presents her team’s large-scale analysis of social odor awareness among participants from 44 countries around the world. The researchers showed that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some patterns of social odor awareness, if