Nonverbal Communication: Scent

Here's a brief article on a soon-to-be-published article on scent and memory. In this study students examined scented and unscented pencils and a ten-point list of the pencil's attributes (i.e., its selling points). The study found that students better remembered (after 2 weeks) more of the attributes of the pencil when it was scented (3.27 out of the 10) than when it was unscented (.87 out of 10). The researcher, Aradhna Krishna of the University of Michigan, concludes: "What we're saying is, it's not just the smell that people remember. It's other things associated with the smell: the brand name, or the shape of the product's box."