Women's faces become more attractive if a pleasant smell is present, researchers have found.

 

They say that odours（气味） can change the way we look at attractiveness and perceive each other.

 

However, they found the effect does not extend to making people appear younger - simply prettier.

 

The research from the Monell Chemical Senses Center reveals that women's faces are rated as more attractive in the presence of pleasant odors.

 

'Odor pleasantness and facial attractiveness integrate into one joint¹ emotional evaluation²,' said Janina Seubert, a cognitive³ neuroscientist who led the research.

 

'This may indicate a common site of neural⁴ processing in the brain.'

 

Perfumes and scented⁵ products have been used for centuries as a way to enhance overall personal appearance.

 

Previous studies had shown perception of facial attractiveness could be influenced when using unpleasant vs. pleasant odors.

 

However, it was not known whether odors influence the actual visual perception of facial features or alternatively, how faces are emotionally evaluated by the brain.

 

The current study design centered on the principle that judging attractiveness and age involve two distinct perceptual（感知的） processing methods: attractiveness is regarded as an emotional process while judgments⁶ of age are believed to be cognitive, or rationally-based.

 

This suggests that olfactory⁷（嗅觉的） and visual cues independently influence judgments of facial attractiveness.

 

With regard to the cognitive task of age evaluation, visual age cues (more wrinkles and blemishes) were linked to older age perception.

 

However, odor pleasantness had a mixed effect.

 

Visual age cues strongly influenced age perception during pleasant odor stimulation⁸, making older faces look older and younger faces look younger.

 

This effect was weakened in the presence of unpleasant odors, so that younger and older faces were perceived to be more similar in age.

 

Jean-Marc Dessirier, Lead Scientist at Unilever and a co-author on the study said, 'These findings have fascinating implications in terms of how pleasant smells may help enhance natural appearance within social settings.

 

'The next step will be to see if the findings extend to evaluation of male facial attractiveness.'

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