Interpersonal Olfactory Intelligence

One of the few people who really understands the intersection of language and smell, and what they mean for the truly scientific pursuit of knowledge in a field of study that refuses to submit to objective observation --

Meditations on Scent With Andreas Keller, the Socrates of Smell

Mar 2023, High Snobiety

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/olfactory-art-andreas-keller-interview/

"It’s very difficult to find a middle ground in talking about smell that conveys what's interesting and fascinating to you in a way that other people can understand,” Keller notes. “The limited vocabulary, the differences in perception between people, the emotional connection to smells… One way is to describe what a smell does to you, how it makes you feel – but that probably tells us more about yourself than about the smell.”

Unrelated image credit: This is not a picture of Andreas Keller, and it's not even a real person, because it's artificially generated. It's a "Rave Party for Jesus Birthday." Also pay artists for their work. 

AI Art - Rave Party Jesus Birthday - 2023

Primitive Mentality

Conservative caveman. Just kidding, he isn’t actually disgusted, because his lip doesn’t curl back to resist the (simulation of) bad food that would be approaching his mouth.

Our reactions to odor reveal our political attitudes

Mar 2018, phys.org

“People who are easily disgusted by body odours are also drawn to authoritarian political leaders.”

That’s what the article says. Well, that’s what the scientist hypothesizes. And his explanation is pretty convincing – if you’re extra sensitive to the smells of sweat or urine, you may be more supportive of the dictator type of political leader who “puts people in their places,” because that type of leader reduces contact between different groups of people (i.e., divides people) which decreases anyone’s chance of becoming ill.

Say that again? The further around you turn your head when you smell [other people’s smells] the more you appreciate a political leader that makes sure you don’t have to smell “other” people.

Usually, I take smell-in-the-news with a grain of salt. Reason being, smell is too misunderstood of a sense to make groundbreaking discoveries in psychology by way of its perceptual channel. Usually also, I take behavioral /social psychology in the news with another grain of salt. The reason for that is the replication crisis in psychology (particularly social psychology, similar to behavioral psychology).

That being said, Jonas Olofsson of Stockholm University has an interesting idea. Disgust is a powerful emotion, and one that can, or should, be easily tested via smell. A little etymology digression – disgust comes from gustation which is about taste and eating and satiation, and to figure out what’s good to eat is one of the few main reasons why we smell, or so it seems. That natural behavior of determining what’s good to eat extrapolates into all kinds of other behaviors, one of them possibly being who to vote for.

Psychological theories about disgust and (American) conservativism have been around for quite some time, but this is a different approach. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.

On Allergies and Sensitization

Writing about smell will get you thinking about nuisance odors and about folks who think that smells are making them sick. A lot of this has to do with allergies, and allergies can be a tricky thing. There is no threshold for the amount of a thing that will elicit a reaction, and so allergies tend to be modulated by our own minds, at least to some extent. In other words, if you’re stressed, or if you’re thinking way too much about these allergies and their allergens and the environment where they come from, you may amplify the effects, and you may start sneezing or scratching at the most miniscule of exposures.

The way allergies work in the body is pretty damn confusing. There’s different kinds of allergies, some are hardwired, we might say, and some are ‘learned’ by the body. Some allergies can be deadly, like a shellfish allergy that closes your throat. Some can be just annoying, but won’t kill you or send you to the hospital (unless your body gets so hijacked by your own histamines that you smash your head into a wall).

All this being said, when I came across this short explanation on how allergies work, and I found it to be somewhat comprehendible, I thought I should repeat it here.

Most chemicals and their metabolic products are not sufficiently large enough to be recognized by the immune system as a foreign substance and thus must first combine with an endogenous protein [something that comes from inside the body not outside, endo- vs exo-] to form an antigen (or immunogen). Such a molecule is called a hapten. The hapten-protein complex (antigen) is then capable of eliciting the formation of antibodies. Subsequent exposure to the chemical results in an antingen-antibody interaction, which provokes the typical manifestations of allergy that range in severity from minor skin disturbance to fatal anaphylactic shock.

-Essentials of Toxicology, Casarett and Doull

Got all that? The “allergic reaction” is really an antigen-antibody reaction. It is your body fighting an intruder, and you are the collateral damage.

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Please take a look at another post called The Dangers of Smell and Perfumes in the Workplace but it’s based on this article: perfume in the workplace, which is an interesting look inside the work of an HR worker who has to deal with employees complaining about their smelly coworkers, and soothing the hypersensitive worker who thinks their coworker’s perfume is making them sick (it’s not; unfortunately, it’s your own mind doing that). 

Synopsis Extraordinaire

I have been immensely fortunate to have Mr. John Biebel review Hidden Scents on the Fragrantica website. Check it out here

Fragrantica is a unique site that hosts an encyclopedia of fragrance, in addition to being an international online magazine for perfume reviews and news in the world of fragrance.

John Biebel is an artist and writer and perfume aficionado. He has a visual arts background like myself, but more importantly, he has penetrated deeper into this book than anyone besides my editor, and has come back with a synopsis that is most articulate.

If you're thinking about reading the book, but you aren't sure what it's about or whether it's up your alley, read this review.

Not to mention, his writing on such a potentially confusing subject is so smooth it's practically machine-readable(!)