Umeå University's logo

umu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Do Women Smell Better than Men?: Gendered Expectations in Olfactory Perception
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology.
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Learned expectations shape behaviours, thoughts, and thus the way the world is perceived. Olfactory perception is one of the less studied senses. One of the seminal issues regard possible differences in olfactory functioning between men and women. It is still unclear if a sex/gender difference exists and in that case what potential explanations could be. This work focused on exploring two salient explanations for possible sex/gender differences: innate differences as compared to gendered expectations. A between-subjects experiment where women and men rated the perceived properties of repeated odor exposure, either without prior information, or with gender-biased rating anchors was conducted. The experiment was conducted using flasks containing the odorant n-butanol. Participants were asked to rate the perceived intensity of the stimuli on a Borg CR-100 scale. Results were analysed in JASP using repeated measures analysis of variances (ANOVA). Bias significantly influenced the intensity ratings of both men and women to the same degree. This speaks against both innate differences and gendered expectations regarding olfaction. It, however, indicates a susceptibility to bias and the framing of information. Implications encompass, theoretically, that expectations change perception. Implications derived from that for applied (e.g., occupational/health) settings encompass the framing of expectation-related information regarding exposures or maladies.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 20
Keywords [en]
Olfaction, Gender, Expectations
National Category
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-209955OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-209955DiVA, id: diva2:1768732
Supervisors
Available from: 2023-06-27 Created: 2023-06-15 Last updated: 2023-06-27Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(52 kB)52 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 52 kBChecksum SHA-512
4c76291ed6fa9dcbd082c6a2d609ce7e40d4f3d61c6e262d6fbe1887ad22ea7a78a3f5fdd3d6c43af1db0fddae39818fb0acca6e05f58dc5029e82fa2433ae90
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
Department of Psychology
Psychology

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 52 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 128 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf