You can smell good mood
Eyes open and closed. Film-ready murders and screams à la Hitchcock's famous "psycho" shower scene chill and frighten audiences for twelve minutes. It may well be that during the performance a very delicate fragrance floats in the room, which is so discreet that a person can no longer consciously perceive it. Can also be that there is no fragrance. At any rate, there is nothing to smell.
Invited to the little horror show Jeanette Haviland-Jones, director of the Human Emotions Lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey, a few miles outside of New York. The professor specializes in exploring the interaction between smell and feeling. The videos are just an accessory. Because after the cinematic shock therapy, she asks her test candidates to write down a small personal experience: a meeting with friends, the preparations for a birthday dinner, a day at work, a holiday memory, no matter. It must be banal, and it does not have to be a novel. A few lines are sufficient for the psychologist to determine how the video images - with and without aroma influence - have had an effect on the mood of the audience.
If, for example, a mixture of bergamot, patchouli and oakmoss (in the world of scents, a composition called "chypre", named after the first perfume of this type) is blown into the test room, the participants remain calm and write even after the "psycho" - Sequences still flowery stories. This shows how calming the mixture affects their emotional world.
Even a video with lots of angry, cursing people does not disturb the viewer - provided that a trace of gardenia hovers unrecognized in the room. In addition, the scent of this flower makes even the most sober poet and makes the world appear pink: in the reports of the subjects who have inhaled the fragrance, at least three times as many positive expressions - as friends, warm, laugh, warm, beautiful - as in the texts of a control group in neutral air.
A perfume seduces: This is shown by tests from psychology
Dr. Haviland-Jones has done many such experiments. All show that smells better than any talk show master are capable of teasing true feelings out of a person - even those who are not aware of it.
That's because of the perfect message transmission from the nose to the cerebellum. Only the sense of smell is directly connected with the limbic system, the place of the emotions. Without detours, every sense of smell there triggers a spontaneous movement that you can not influence and certainly can not prevent. Smells are finally in the air, and that man needs to breathe.
With her "taster lessons", the scientist wants to better understand unexplored subliminal processes in the brain. Jeanette Haviland-Jones calls her test method "search engine". It works as refined and safe as the effect of the scent nuance, which is used in the least concentration: It does not come up trivial, the researcher the subconscious for it all the more.
The test persons literally give her in writing, with the self-written everyday episodes, what has happened in the attempt deep inside. "I examine the lyrics for the frequency and type of sentimental, living words that occur in them, documenting the changes in nonverbal behavior that are triggered by the experiment and not perceived by the test subjects, let alone attributed to the effect of a scent."
Fragrances can amplify moods - positive as well as negative
In other words, what matters is not what the test subjects tell, but how they do it - the choice of words reveals what they actually feel. And that in turn is influenced by the smell in the room. "Fragrances have an immediate effect on feelings, they cause people to see things differently, they can both increase and decrease the positive and the negative mood," says dr. Haviland-Jones.
The power of smells - everyone uses them in his own way. Women and men take perfumes to please themselves and others. Department store managers scent the floors so that customers feel comfortable, stay longer and possibly buy more. Subtle mixtures take subway wagons and railway stations the Mief, soothing essences to dampen the aggressiveness of aggressive passengers. Fragrance notes such as chypre and gardenia are also ideal for these uses. And even the fact that odors can also amplify negative moods, is exploited: For example, are already using special mixtures with a kind of stink bomb effect, for example, protect prisons or military installations with a subliminal fragrance wall, so curious as enemies instinctively a large arc to make the respective objects.
In principle, one is often led around by the nose, without realizing it. "That has always been so," says the specialist. "In antiquity, the world's most famous scientists were perfumers, creating fragrances for rich families that exuded their power and influence, and how many churches use fragrance signals like incense to take everyone in the room!" I think the method is pretty clever . "
A perfume can improve your own charisma
Dr. Haviland-Jones, in her early 60s, has stored every detail of her research area on call. Anyone who knows so much is also an interesting partner for international fragrance companies. For example, the American company Estée Lauder in the Human Emotions Lab - by the way - successfully tested whether his new perfume "Sensuous" actually evokes the name-affirming feelings on test subjects. For the industry Dr. med. Haviland-Jones actually little, but since the Lauder mixture contained honey, she could not resist. This nuance was missing her in her test collection so far.
Could a perfume also enhance its charisma and make it look more attractive? Dr. Havilland thinks briefly: "In one experiment, we tested the behavior of people who were given flowers, smiled, admitted close, started a conversation, and often spontaneously embraced or kissed the bearer, even men reacted that way, so I am convinced, a flowery scent could have a similarly attractive effect. "
tangy The light body spray "Eau d'Énergie" by Biotherm (above) is fun as a summer holiday day - thanks to delicate, floral notes of fresh jasmine and cyclamen and ripe sun fruits such as tangerine, orange or lemon.
Sensual "Sensuous" by Estée Lauder (below) is inviting, pleasantly warm and very feminine. This is provided by lily, magnolia, jasmine and ylang ylang in unusual combination with wood and honey. Available from September.
Capricious The Eau de Toilette "Ange ou Démon" by Givenchy is also available in a limited edition "Diamantissime Edition" with Swarovski crystals on the bottle. The fragrance comes with mandarin, lily of the valley and orange innocent, but then shows up with heliotrope, rosewood and patchouli as a sweet seducer
balancing "Femme l'eau fraîche" by Boss (left) looks as light, pure and pure as a white linen summer dress. It is made possible by fruity tangerines, elegant stephanotis blossoms and gentle amber.
Seductive Refined combi for refined women: In "Hypnôse Senses" by Lancôme (right), an intensive chypre note with patchouli comes along with flowers of osmanthus, the "Chinese olive tree". Irritatingly beautiful
Refreshing "Insolence Eau Glacée" by Guerlain is the "Insolence" variant for sultry, summer-heavy days: a pleasantly cool scent of red berries, violet leaves, iris and citrus fruits
More new floral summer scents, z. B .: "Absynthe" by Christian Lacroix (with golden freesia, green anise, orchid, via Avon); "Ungaro Party" by Emanuel Ungaro (lily of the valley, lotus flower, watermelon and lemon); "Versense" of Versace (with green mandarins, prickly pear, bergamot, sea lily, jasmine); "Flower by Kenzo Spring Fragrance" by Kenzo (violets and freesia with tangerine, ginger and lychee); "Escale à Pondichéry" by Christian Dior (black tea with jasmine and sandalwood); Hall of Halle Berry (mimosa, fig, freesia, hibiscus); "Beautiful" by Betty Barclay (Freesia, Gardenia, Jasmine with Mandarin and Pear); "The Beat Eau de Toilette" by Burberry (with iris, Ceylon tea, mandarin and quince blossom)
