PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Artin Arshamian
AU  - Richard C. Gerkin
AU  - Nicole Kruspe
AU  - Ewelina Wnuk
AU  - Simeon Floyd
AU  - Carolyn O’Meara
AU  - Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez
AU  - Johan N. Lundström
AU  - Joel D. Mainland
AU  - Asifa Majid
TI  - The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures
AID  - 10.1101/2021.03.01.433367
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.03.01.433367
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/02/2021.03.01.433367.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/02/2021.03.01.433367.full
AB  - Human sensory experience varies across the globe. Nonetheless, all humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint. In olfaction, it is unknown to what degree sensory perception, in particular the perception of odor pleasantness, is dictated by universal biological principles versus sculpted by culture. To address this issue, we asked 235 individuals from 9 diverse non-western cultures to rank the hedonic value of monomolecular odorants. We observed substantial global consistency, with molecular identity explaining 41% of the variance in individual pleasantness rankings, while culture explained only 6%. These rankings were predicted by the physicochemical properties of out-of-sample molecules and out-of-sample pleasantness ratings given by a separate group of industrialized western urbanites, indicating human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.