ゼミ課題 (Summary) Olfactics （ゼミ生 b.m.）

Olfactics

　Olfactics is the study of smell and that is one of the nonverbal communications. Smell gives us positive and negative effects. When we smell aromas, we feel relax. On the other hand, stenches make us feel unpleasant.
We have some abilities of smell and we can divide those into 5 groups: smell blindness, smell discrimination, smell adaptation, smell memory, and smell overload.
　Smell blindness means that people can’t understand what smell it is. This affects their sense of taste because we know food from flavor and taste. However, smell discrimination is the opposite ability. This is that we are able to distinguish the smell of roses between sunflowers, and melons between lemons, so we can tell one person from another.
The ability which we are hard to understand a particular smell because of contacting it many times is smell adaptation. The typical example is what we are unrecognizable to smell ourselves. We get a sniff of ourselves without thinking every day, so we don’t know smell of ourselves.
When we smell a perfume, we recall someone. That is an ability of smell memory. A lot of Japanese people have an experience with smell of umeboshi. Once we smell umeboshi, we recall the red and circle shape and sour taste. That shows the smell and memory have a connection.
Smell overload occurs that we are in place which gives forth odor, for example, aromas shops, laundry detergent floor at the supermarkets, etc. Strong odor makes our smell unnoticed therefore it is difficult to tell our smell there.
Olfaction is a very simple way to communicate with people because the air conveys our smells instead we make motions, especially perfumes help us to emit our smell. Thus, we should take care not to throw off bad smell.