Odor experience as an affective state: Effects of odor pleasantness on creativity.
Item
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Title
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Odor experience as an affective state: Effects of odor pleasantness on creativity.
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Identifier
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AAI9224794
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identifier
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9224794
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Creator
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Bastone, Linda M.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Howard Ehrlichman
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Personality | Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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A substantial body of research supports the claim that mild affective states influence a variety of cognitive and behavioral variables. Still, it is not clear whether these effects should be attributed to the affective states themselves or to the cognitions associated with these states. In order to examine the influence of affective feelings on creativity, pleasant and unpleasant odors were used to induce affect while minimizing associated cognitive involvement.;Ninety subjects (45 men, 45 women) completed practice versions of two putative measures of creativity (the Remote Associates Test (RAT) and the Alternate Uses Test) and a non-creative, cognitive task (digit deletion) and then worked on the tasks in the presence of either a pleasant odor, an unpleasant odor, or odorless air.;The results provided only limited support for the main experimental hypothesis. As predicted, the unpleasant odor group provided fewer alternate uses on average than both the pleasant and the no-odor groups and the groups did not differ in their performance on the digit deletion task. Contrary to prediction, the odor groups did not differ in their performance on the RAT. Therefore, the Alternate Uses results cannot be interpreted more broadly as an effect of odor pleasantness on creativity.;The failure to obtain odor effects on the RAT may be explained in part by the limited effects of the pleasant odor on mood. Differences in the cognitive requirements of the two creativity tasks might also have led to the inconsistent results. Coming up with one answer in response to a number of criteria (as in the RAT task) seems to require a more deliberate or controlled approach than does the Alternate Uses Test which requires the production of a variety of responses to satisfy only limited demands. As Ehrlichman and Bastone (1991) hypothesized, behavior on tasks that require controlled processes may not vary as a function of odor pleasantness whereas behavior on tasks that are more automatic may be influenced by odor experience. If this interpretation is correct, the results have important implications for understanding affect-cognition interactions.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
