About fragrances and how they influence our feelings

 

fragrances
Photo by:Julie Mellors

 

Perfume is the most intense form of memory (Jean Paul Gaultier)

 

If we quote the fashion designer Jean Paul Gautier, we people associate with fragrances certain memories. Everytime I smell the fragrance of roses I remember the roses of my mother`s garden and I think about the warm summer days we spend together surrounded by those wonderful flowers. Because I love the smell of roses I have also bought 3 perfumes with rose fragrance, I usually use when I go out. I feel really comfortable when I wear this perfume. When I enter rooms and I smell the fragrance of roses it is a very pleasant experience to me.

We customers search our favorite smells even in the shops we go to buy.

Perfume stores make use of the power of fragrances on the customers. They vary different fragrances to bring us in different moods when we enter there. Therefore the smell of the different fragrances influence us humans: Fruity notes like orange, grapefruit or apricot lift our mood and they make us to be more positive. When we breath in notes of lavender we calm down and we feel relaxed, maybe we connect with those flowers a voyage to Provence. The fragrance of Jasmine and Vanilla has an oriental touch and should make us feel content, optimistic, satisfied. Rosemary Scent is typically Italian and transmits us the latin temperament by making you more active. Cinnamon is often found in a fragrance combination, which stimulates us and makes us more focused.

We breath in those different scents, by now it is up to us to appraise, if we perceive them as pleasant or not. If those are too intensive for us, we tend to leave those places quite soon. Fragrances enter directly to our brain, so they are processed very quick and therefore they have a deep and automatic impact on our moods. If we perceive a place as nice smelling, we tend to spend more time there and to perceive it in a more positive way. But it is important to mention that the smell should be suitable for the place it is used for, otherwise it gets a conflictual character for us and we tend to leave the place sooner. Moreover we tend to remember a place or a product for a longer time, if we know its smell. Women are especially more sensible to a fragrance, because their sense of smell is more sensitive compared to men.

So now I would be curious to learn about your favorite scent and how you feel when you smell it?

Literature

  • Kirchler, E. (2011). Wirtschaftspsychologie. Individuen, Gruppen, Märkte, Staat. 4. vollständig  überarbeitete Auflage. Hogrefe: Göttingen.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.