Your Face Looks Prettier When You Smell Nice: Pleasant Odors Increase Facial Attractiveness

Want people to think your face looks more attractive? Then try some perfume. Scientists have found that women's faces are rated as more attractive in the presence of pleasant odors. The findings reveal a little bit more about how people perceive one another, and shows the role that scent can have in that perception.

"Odor pleasantness and facial attractiveness integrate into one joint emotional evaluation," said Janina Seubert, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This may indicate a common site of neural processing in the brain."

Perfumes and scents have been used for centuries as a way to enhance personal appearance. In fact, previous studies have shown that perception of facial attractiveness can be influenced by pleasant vs. unpleasant odors. Yet until now, scientists weren't sure whether odors influence actual visual perception of facial features.

In order to find that out, the researchers focused on the principle that judging attractiveness and age involve two distinct perceptual processing methods; attractiveness is an emotional process while judgment of age is a cognitive process.

The scientists asked 18 young adults to rate the attractiveness and age of eight female faces that were presented as photographs. The images varied in terms of natural aging features. Then, the scientists exposed the volunteers to one of five odors while they were viewing the pictures. The scents ranged from a blend of fish oil, an unpleasant odor, to rose oil, a pleasant odor.

So what did they find? It turns out that odor pleasant directly influenced ratings of facial attractiveness. Not only that, but odor pleasantness also caused people to think older faces look older and younger faces look younger. This age effect was weakened in the face of unpleasant odors, so that younger and older faces were perceived as more similar in age.

"These findings have fascinating implications in terms of how pleasant smells may help enhance natural appearance within social settings," said Jean-Marc Dessirier, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The next step will be to see if the findings extend to evaluation of male facial attractiveness."

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.