Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

It’s pretty well documented that different smells can alter a person’s mood, cognitive function, and physical or psychological wellbeing–ask any woman who’s been dutch-ovened by her spouse.

But new research from Leiden University in the Netherlands has shown that the scent of lavender can something else: increase interpersonal trust.

(Which you’ll need after dutch-ovening your spouse.)

Psychologists Roberta Sellaro and Lorenza Colzato from the university’s Cognitive Psychology Unit and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition and their colleagues recruited 90 healthy adults with a mean age of 20, divided them up into three groups of 30, and had each of them play the Trust Game in one of three different locations.

One-third of the participants played the Trust Game in a lavender-scented room, while another one-third did so in a peppermint-scented room and the final 30 played the game in an unscented room. In each case, one individual (the trustor) was given five euros and was free to decide how much of the money he would give to another (the trustee) in each round of the game.

The trustor would receive extra money, but only if the trustee gave him enough money in return, the researchers explained. The money given to the trustee by the trustor served as an indicator of mutual trust. Those who played the game when exposed to the scent of lavender were found to have given significantly more to their comrades than those exposed to peppermint fragrance.

In fact, as Sellaro, Colzato and their co-authors reported in the January 13 online edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology, participants in the lavender-scented room transferred a mean of 3.90 euros to the trustees, compared to 3.23 for the peppermint-scented room and 3.20 for the non-scented control room.

The researchers claim that their research is the first to analyze the impact that scent can have on interpersonal trust, and said that they believe that the fragrance of lavender “temporarily induces a more inclusive cognitive-control state that, in turn, influences the extent to which people trust others.”

“Interpersonal trust is an essential element for social co-operation bargaining and negotiation,” Sellaro said Tuesday in a statement. “Our results might have various serious implications for a broad range of situations in which interpersonal trust is an essential element.”

“Smelling the aroma of lavender may help a seller to establish more easily a trusting negotiation to sell a car, or in a grocery store it may induce consumers to spend more money buying products,” she added. “The smell of lavender may also be helpful in sport psychology to enhance trust and build team spirit, for example in the case of team games such as soccer and volleyball.”

The study authors explain that the lack of a similar effect in the peppermint group may be due to the that aroma’s inability to induce the same type of cognitive-control state as lavender, or that trust is affected selectively by a more inclusive cognitive-control state but not a more exclusive one. Future research could examine whether other scents to produce similar reactions.

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