Ever walked into a place you hadn’t been to for years and instantly recalled the smell? Maybe a church, a campsite, a ferry boat, or an aunt’s house?
Smell can access your memory recall in an instant, as if you have fallen through a trap door and stepped back in time. The smell of baking bread from a wood burning stove, for example, can transport you in seconds to when you were a toddler, waiting anxiously for fresh-baked brown bread soaked in soft yellow butter, and experiencing warm feelings of secure comfort in Granny’s loving care.
On the other hand, that same smell could evoke a sudden, flood of vivid memories for someone else. Our response to smell is highly individualized. Where does the aroma of coffee take you? Or the smell of newly mown grass?
Helen Keller, born deaf and blind, summed it up perfectly: “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” Imagine the smell of a baby, a puppy, the sweet smell of honeysuckle after a spring rain.
Our first whiff of a new scent seems to govern the way we feel about that smell in the future. This effect was demonstrated in two separate studies that exposed people to wintergreen aroma; one conducted in the mid-1960s in the UK (Moncrieff, 1966) and the other in the late 1970s in the U.S. (Cain and Johnson, 1978). Respondents in Britain found the smell less pleasant because many associated it with its use in hospitals during WW II, whereas most American respondents found it agreeable – probably because wintergreen is used to flavour mint candy (reported online by Scientific American).
The Nose Knows
By Vivienne O’Keeffe
Our sense of smell can open many doors