Do humans naturally like floral scents, or is it a socially transmitted preference?
On a walk yesterday, I was poking my nose into all kinds of blooms along my path, and it occurred to me that this affinity that humans have for the scent of flowers is kind of hard to explain in terms of natural selection. Flowers attract pollinators with their scents, so it’s clear why bats, beetles, moths and bees are attracted to these scents. They, as well as the plants, benefit from that affinity.
But why are humans so enamored with these smells? They’re not pheromone-related scents, like musk. They don’t smell like food (and flowers don’t coincide with fruit in the environment). There are hundreds of volatile compounds that compose the various floral aromas, but there seem to be very few flower scents that we find actually repulsive.
Do we just learn from our elders that this a scent that we’re supposed to find pleasant? I remember seeing toddlers pick up flowers, smell them, “Mmmm” appreciatively, then proffer them to my nose, only to find that whatever little wildflower it was really had no scent. But we do seem to catch on very early that flower=smells good. Is it just that sniff—->“Mmmm” meme that our mothers pass onto us? Is it based on an association with the visual splendor of flowers?
What do you think?
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I would theorize that we are hard wired to like sweet smells since that’s an indicator of ripeness in some of our food (fruit, mostly), which would have improved our survival ability. But we also have now created pleasant cultural associations with flowers and blooms, so I would guess both.
Floral scents say “sweetness” and “food.” Often they are a marker for a place where food will be one day.
I’m not sure that I get the association between floral scents and “sweetness”, really. That too seems like a learned association. Fruit doesn’t smell like flowers, after all, and sugar doesn’t smell like anything.
Thinking about it, the plants that produce most of our fruits don’t generally have very fragrant blossoms, do they?
I think it has to do with learning behaviors for survival. From the time we are born we are smelling, tasting, touching and seeing. A few days old, my daughter would fall asleep quickly in my arms. It wasn’t enough that I hold her. Even on the bed, I didn’t hold her every time. She would smell me and doze off. In her bassinet, I would place my pj in the bed with her if I heard her become fussy. The scent of my clothing was enough to lull her back to sleep.
To her that scent was probably associated with survival since I was the one feeding her most times.
We sniff our babies as well. They don’t all smell the same. A babys senses if probably higher than most. But with time we start to associate certain perfumes with moments. Whenever I smell snow, I think of my childhood. Or when I smell morning dew in the summer, I remember my son being born. Certain perfume smells remind me of people who wore them. Its one of the five senses, so why wouldn’t we just naturally enjoy it. Nobody has to teach an infant that touch feels good. It just knows it does. But I think our noses works like our eyes and taste. We know what smells we like and they are not the same for everyone and the same goes for taste. The same as what our concept of beauty is.
I don’t know why, but when my grandson was a baby he lived to smell flowers. I don’t think it was a learned thing.
Fascinating question! It inspired me to do some research.
A lot of scent preferences in humans are related to the MHC- the major histocompatibility complex, a set of genes vital to immunity. For example, studies have shown that women prefer the scent of males with a MHC that is significantly different than their own, because such diversity produces offspring with a better immune system.
There isn’t a lot out there on floral scents, but I did find this study-Evidence for MHC-correlated perfume preferences in humans. It’s just a start, but it did find that people with a similar region in the MHC preferred similar scents. They theorized “This agrees with the hypothesis that perfumes are selected “for self” to amplify in some way body odors that reveal a person’s immunogenetics.”
So we could have a clue here. I’ll see if I can find more on the subject.
There aren’t many floral scents I like. I like sweet scents though.
We like things that clearly don’t smell sweet – baconflowers.
floral just smells purty!
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