The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures

Humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint, but individual sensory experience nevertheless varies. In olfaction, it is not known to what degree sensory perception, particularly the perception of odor pleasantness, is founded on universal principles,1–5 dictated by culture,6–13 or merely a matter of personal taste.6,8–10,12,14 To address this, we asked 225 individuals from 9 diverse nonwestern cultures—hunter-gatherer to urban dwelling—to rank the monomolecular odorants from most to least pleasant. Contrary to expectations, culture explained only 6% of the variance in pleasantness rankings, whereas individual variability or personal taste explained 54%. Importantly, there was substantial global consistency, with molecular identity explaining 41% of the variance in odor pleasantness rankings. Critically, these universal rankings were predicted by the physicochemical properties of out-of-sample molecules and out-of-sample pleasantness ratings given by a tenth group of western urban participants. Taken together, this shows human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles. •Culture plays a minimal role in the perception of odor pleasantness•Individuals within cultures vary as to which odors they find pleasant•Odor pleasantness can be predicted by the physicochemical properties of molecules•Human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles Arshamian et al. compare 10 diverse cultures, including hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists, for their perception of odor pleasantness. Contrary to expectations, they find that culture is not a major predictor of odor pleasantness. Instead, there is substantial global consistency, which can be predicted by the physicochemical properties of molecules.