A standardized lexicon of body odor words crafted from 17 countries
Body odors offer a unique window into the physiological and psychological profile of the emitter. This information, broadcast in nonverbal communication, significantly shapes social interactions. However, effectively digitizing body odors requires a precise framework for perceptual operationalization. Previous research has used a very limited number of verbal terms, such as pleasant, intense, or attractive, which fails to adequately capture qualitative differences. To address this gap, we elicited body odor descriptions from 2,607 participants across 17 countries and 13 languages. All these descriptions are presented here in one dataset, together with a condensed list of 25 body odor words (BOW). Those terms reliably differentiated between body states, and were validated in a separate study with a different group of 155 perceivers. The dataset, available as a web application, provides a novel operationalization of body odor impressions, which is a precondition for studying olfaction in human nonverbal communication, for perception-based digitization of body odors and for comparative studies.
Authors
- Antonie Louise Bierling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3372-1106)
- Barbara Żyżelewicz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4858-1647)
- Veikko Surakka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-0713)
- Ilona Croy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0361-5559)
- Asifa Majid (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0132-216X)
- F. Ho
- Mariano Mastinu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3833-9707)
- Kedarmal Verma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0001-4237)
- Evelina Thunell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9368-4661)
- Lana Takau
- Uta Sailer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9728-8738)
- Aaron Galiano Jimenez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8657-552X)
- Pavlína Kyjaková (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0081-3717)
- Alexander Croy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9296-9350)
- Annett Schirmer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1474-2788)
- E. Silva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6588-3949)
- Nicole Power Guerra
- Leah Bloy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2645-716X)
- Fatma Bilem
Institutions
- Western University (CA)
- Tampere University (FI)
- University of Calgary (CA)
- Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Universität Innsbruck (AT)
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- University of Wrocław (PL)
- Karolinska Institutet (SE)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE)
- Institute of Psychology (PL)
- Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (CZ)
- University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus (DE)
- Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IN)
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- Technische Universität Dresden (DE)
- University of Valparaíso (CL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2025-02-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04630-8
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.93