ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Emotion Science

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1468416

Measuring Emotions Triggered by Fragrance through Behavioral Paradigms

Provisionally accepted
Yue  LvYue LvHua  SunHua Sun*Hong-Yu  WuHong-Yu Wu
  • Shanghai China-norm Quality Technical Service Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Fragrance has a positive impact on various aspects of people's emotions, experiences, and behaviors, such as product satisfaction, happiness, and comfort in daily life. While previous research has predominantly utilized physiological measurements or subjective evaluations, behavioral methods have been underexplored. This study aims to explore the measurement of emotional responses to fragrance through behavioral paradigms. In a self-controlled experiment, participants were instructed to smell various fragrances and assessed their emotional changes before and after exposure using EEG, emotion scales, and behavioral paradigms. The findings revealed that the emotional bias measured by the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT) was consistent with the emotional valence results obtained from EEG measurements, and the trend of time perception measured by the time bisection task was consistent with the arousal index measured by EEG. After smelling the orange fragrance, the EEG valence of participants increased from 2.61 to 3.68 (p=0.017), the d value increased from -0.66 to 0.21 (p=0.071), the EEG arousal decreased from 0.97 to -0.30 (p=0.092), and the temporal dilation value increased from 57.24 to 67.51 (p=0.038). The results indicate that changes in emotional valence and arousal in response to fragrance can be effectively assessed through behavioral paradigms. These results contribute to the fragrance product development and provide insights for enhancing multisensory experiences.

Keywords: fragrance, emotion, Behavioral paradigms, EEG, SAM or the participants' olfactory condition

Received: 22 Jul 2024; Accepted: 26 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Lv, Sun and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Hua Sun, Shanghai China-norm Quality Technical Service Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China

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