Human Body Odors Modulation on Affective Processing of Social-Emotional Virtual Environments

The link between the olfactory and affective systems in humans has been explored in clinical and non-clinical populations. Specifically, there is evidence indicating that both artificial scents and human body odors (HBOs) can influence individual affective processing. Research on HBOs has primarily concentrated on the appraisal of emotional faces, while their effects on other social stimuli are still being investigated. In particular, social-emotional situations can evoke various reactions in humans, and it is essential to examine HBOs' role in their affective processing. Virtual reality facilitates this research by allowing the reproduction of standardized and realistic social-emotional situations. In this study, we investigated whether exposure to emotion-related HBOs (happy, fear, and neutral state) modulates the affective processing of social-emotional situations compared to the absence of exposure. Three social-emotional virtual environments (VEs) designed to elicit positive, negative, and neutral affectivity were tested. During the VE experiences, the experimental group was exposed to HBOs (n=77), while the control group experienced them without HBOs (n=72). Participants were required to rate individual valence and arousal after each social-emotional VE. Findings revealed that HBO exposure overall resulted in lower arousal ratings and higher valence ratings than the control group. The difference in valence rating was particularly evident in the negative VE. This demonstrates the modulating effect of HBOs on the affective processing of social-emotional VEs. Future directions include investigating differences across emotion-related HBOs in the affective processing of social-emotional situations.