If something smells awful, it’s because it’s disgusting, right? Maybe, but the truth is a little bit more complicated.

A recent study found that our immediate olfactory reactions to stimuli are heavily influenced by the emotional reactions of other people. This suggests that when we smell something bad, we may be picking up on people’s emotions just as much as the scent of the object. Such a conclusion would fit with previous studies which found a strong relationship between our senses and our emotions.

A team of researchers out of the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, examined whether exposure to happy and disgusted faces would affect participants’ reactions to various odors. Participants were shown images of either happy, disgusted, or neutral faces before being exposed to various scents.

Perhaps surprisingly, the participants reacted significantly differently depending on which expression they were exposed to. They rated scents more positively after seeing happy faces, while rating them more negatively after seeing disgusted ones. This held over the majority of scents, despite the odors varying drastically from caramel to human sweat. Only when exposed to the smell of feces did emotion fail to have an impact.

When combining these results with fMRI brain scans, the researchers were even able to identify the section of the brain responsible. They highlighted the role of the piriform cortex, in conditioning our response to a scent, even before we actually smell it.

These results may seem shocking. Don’t our senses simply tell us how the world is around us? Our very empirical skills seem challenged if our sense of smell has more to do with expectation than reality!

However, previous research into other senses has repeatedly found that emotions can influence our sensations, whereas sensations can similarly impact our emotions!

One 2011 study found that tired or overburdened participants actually perceived hills as steeper than those who were energetic or unencumbered. Similarly, happy participants considered their food as actually tasting better than sad ones, while fearful individuals ranked noises as louder and cliffs as higher. In each case, the emotions seemed to profoundly shape perceptions.

This relationship between emotions and sensations works the other direction too: many sensations can trigger certain emotions.

For example, our repeated exposures to certain scents can condition us to react in specific ways. This holds when ardent coffee drinkers immediately feel energetic and upbeat when exposed to the smell of coffee. This can happen even before a drop touches their lips.

After we repeatedly experience pleasure and energy from consuming coffee, our brains become accustomed to associating those feelings with the beverage and are then triggered by the smell, taste, or even sight of it! In a similar, though less uplifting fashion, the mere smell of fire can trigger a fear response in many people, even if they are perfectly safe.

For more information on the relationship between emotion and perception, check out our past blogs here and here!

Could happiness be a purchasable commodity like any other?

It has long been a cliché that we cannot simply buy happiness, but is this really true? In fact, several recent studies have begun to find striking correlations between wealth and happiness, but it isn’t that simple. For example, your purchased happiness seems to depend on what exactly you are spending money on.

A growing body of research is growing to support the idea that money does lead to happiness. For instance, a 2013 study by economists Dr. Betsey Stevenson and Dr. Justin Wolfers found that happiness is heavily correlated with per capita GDP, meaning that the wealthier a nation is, the happier people in it tend to be.

Similarly, Stevenson and Wolfers found that, within a given country, happiness rises alongside income. This study flies in the face of some conventional wisdom by denying any so-called “satiation point,” where happiness ceases to grow despite rising wealth.

The concept of a “satiation point” is evident in an earlier study from 2010. This study did find that happiness rise together, but only up to an annual salary of $75,000. After surpassing this point, authors Dr. Daniel Kahneman and Dr. Angus Deaton found that happiness levels no longer correlated with wealth.

While this picture remains muddled, new research suggests that looking at gross income does not give us a full story. Instead, it is important to examine specifically how wealth is used to foster happiness. A groundbreaking 2017 study sought to analyze the effect of differing spending habits on happiness.

The study authors recruited participants and asked them to spend money on material purchases, like clothing or wine, but the following weekend, urged them to purchase services that would give them more leisure time. This latter category included paying for a cleaning service or meal delivery, both of which would save the purchaser the time and effort need to clean or cook.

After each of these weekends, the researchers asked for participants to report their levels of happiness and found decidedly more positive emotions amongst those that purchased leisure time.

Similarly, the same authors surveyed approximately 6,000 people with incomes ranging from $30,000/year to some in the millions. They asked each respondent to report their level of happiness and to describe their purchasing habits. Reinforcing their previous results, they found that those who “purchased leisure time” were happier than those who spend money on material objects.

In emphasizing the conclusion’s significance, one study author, Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, said “if altering slightly how people are spending their money could [boost life satisfaction], it’s something we really want to understand and perhaps encourage people to do.”

These results confirm some previous research. In a previous blog, we reported how spending money on experiences, like vacations, boosted happiness more than material purchases. Similarly, other research has found that charitable giving provides more happiness that just spending that money on ourselves.

Clearly, how we spend money matters, and hopefully further research will continue to shed light on such an important question.

For more information on the psychology of money and happiness, check out or previous blogs here and here!

We already know that faces are incredibly central to human interaction, but facial recognition may also be fundamental to our brain’s development.

Science has long demonstrated that even newborn infants have a strong preference for human faces over other stimuli. Now, a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles, may have found that our preference for faces begins even before birth itself!

These researchers exposed fetuses to triangles of red dots which sought to mimic facial structures, by representing the triangle that two eyes and a mouth create in a real face. In fact, past research has shown that such triangles serve as similar stimuli to faces for newborn children.

After projecting these dots into the fetus’ peripheral vision, researchers slowly moved them away from the fetus’ line of sight. Amazingly, ultrasound pictures show that a significant number of fetus’ moved their heads to follow the dots. While this was still a minority of total exposures, when contrasted with nonfacelike triangles, the fetuses reacted almost three times as often.

While some critics have said that it is too early to conclude any level of actual facial recognition, the very method of projecting images into the womb has yielded praise. Scott Johnson, a developmental psychologist uninvolved in the study, said the method “opens up all kinds of new doors to understand human development,” adding that it was “very, very exciting.”

While it may be premature to conclude a preference for faces at this stage in development, such a conclusion would be consistent with previous research that has found a consistent preference for human faces amongst newborn babies, within minutes of birth.

For example, a 1974 study showed newborns images of faces after only nine minutes. They found that the newborns would follow these faces as they moved for longer than they would for similar images of unintelligible images.

Subsequent research found that, within hours, babies would be able to differentiate their mother’s face from strangers, showing a preference for their mother. What is most striking about this is the speed at which young humans learn how to recognize and differentiate faces.

Similar research has even found that newborns, after only a day, show increased preference towards “beautiful faces.” These researchers contended that such faces better represent the stereotypical or “prototypical” human face, helping to explain these surprising results.

If facial recognition is really this deeply ingrained in our brain’s development, it would help explain the notion of universal emotions that span cultures. Followers of this blog will be familiar with the notion of universal basic emotions, and of the idea that these have an evolutionary origin.

For more information on this, check out our relevant blogs here and here!