Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: SHAKESPEARE WAS WRONG

by Hazed

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

So wrote Shakespeare in the tragic love story Romeo and Juliet. But now it turns out the bard was wrong: calling a rose by a different name might well stop it from smelling so sweet.

Scientists have discovered that the way odors are labelled affects the reaction of people smelling them. They carried out research in which positive, neutral or negative names were given to 15 smelly substances. Subject were then asked to smell them, and in one experiment rated the sniffs for pleasantness and intensity, while in another their heart rate, skin conductivity and sniff rate were measured.

The result: the same odors were perceived as more pleasant when given positive names than with neutral or nasty names.

This is fascinating, and you can read more about the experiment here. It's worth going to this page because it has a table showing the nice and nasty names used (neutral names were just numbers). Some of the pairings are intriguing: dried cloves and dentist's waiting room, for example. Or pine needles and old turpentine. The best of all: Parmesan cheese and dried vomit.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page