Smells Influence Perceived Pleasantness but Not Memorization of a Visual Virtual Environment

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate whether the perception of still scenes in a virtual environment in congruent versus incongruent condition can be influenced by odors. Ninety healthy participants were divided into three groups, including two experimental virtual reality (VR) environments: a rose garden, an orange basket, and a control condition. In each VR condition, participants were exposed to a rose odor, an orange odor, or no odor, resulting in congruent, incongruent, and control conditions. Participants were asked to describe (a) the content of the VR scene and rate its overall pleasantness and (b) the smell and to rate its intensity and pleasantness. For each condition, participants were tested twice. During the second test, participants provided ratings and descriptions of the content of the VR scenes without being exposed to odors or VR environments. Virtual scenarios tended to be remembered as more pleasant when presented with congruent odors. Furthermore, participants used more descriptors in congruent scenarios than in incongruent scenarios. Eventually, rose odor appeared to be remembered as more pleasant when presented within congruent scenarios. These findings show that olfactory stimuli in congruent versus incongruent conditions can possibly modulate the perception of the pleasantness of visual scenes but not the memorization.

Access to Nature via Virtual Reality: A Mini-Review

“…Recent evidence indicates that VR with multisensory stimuli may elicit a positive impact on users ( Melo et al, 2020 ). However, only a few studies employed multisensory VR to focus on the effects of virtual nature, and only the olfactory stimulus was considered, while other popular sensory stimuli such as haptics were not included ( Hedblom et al, 2019a ; Sabiniewicz et al, 2021 ). According to Hedblom et al (2019a) , the olfactory stimuli of nature may be better at decreasing stress than visual stimuli, which could be related to the odor of trees ( Ikei et al, 2015 ).…”

Smelling sensations: Olfactory crossmodal correspondences (JPI-first)

“…A study by Piqueras-Fiszman & Spence [59] has shown that people have strong crossmodal associations with products, and incongruency with these sensory expectations ''annoys'' the consumer [68]. Albeit, semantic congruency can increase its perceived pleasantness [57,61,64]. It is well known that adding additional sensory dimensions to virtual and augmented reality applications can increase the sense of presence (see [20] for a review).…”

Olfactory Virtual Reality: A New Frontier in the Treatment and Prevention of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…Evidence for the ability of odors to create particularly positive experiences in VR was recently shown in a study that demonstrated that odors increased the pleasantness of visual scenes in a virtual environment [73]; in another study, the presence of congruent odors augmented the desirability of and cravings for visual presentations of food in a virtual environment [74]. These examples illustrate the potency of odors to augment positive experiences in VR and their potential for therapeutic benefits.…”