The social odor scale: Development and initial validation of a new scale for the assessment of social odor awareness

Abstract

The degree of attention individuals pay to olfactory cues (called odor awareness) influences the role of odors in everyday life. Particularly, odors produced by the human body (i.e., social odors) are able to carry a wide variety of information and to elicit a broad spectrum of emotional reactions, making them essential in interpersonal relationships. Hence, despite the assessment of awareness toward social odors is crucial, a proper tool is still lacking. Here, we designed and initially validated the Social Odor Scale (SOS), a 12-item scale designed to measure the individual differences in awareness towards different social odors. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA; KMO test: MSA = 0.78; Bartlett's test: χ2(78) = 631.34, p < 0.001; Chi-squared test: χ2(42) = 71.84, p = 0.003) suggests that the three factors structure was the model that best fit with the Italian version of the scale. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supports a second-order model with one higher-order factor representing social odor awareness in general and three lower-order factors representing familiar, romantic partner, and stranger social odors. The final version of the scale presented a good fit (RMSEA = 0.012, SRMR = 0.069, CFI = 0.998, TLI = 0.997). In Study 2, CFA was performed in the German version of the scale confirming the validity of scale structure. Study 3 and 4 revealed that SOS total score and its subscales were positively correlated with other validated olfactory scales, but not with olfactory abilities. Moreover, SOS was found to be related to the gender of the participants: women reported to be more aware to social odors and, specifically, to familiar social odors than men. Overall, the results indicated that SOS is a valid and reliable instrument to assess awareness toward social odors in everyday life.

Fig 1. Factorial map of the CFA results for the SOS.

CFA, confirmatory factor analysis; FAM, familiar social odor; PAR, romantic partner social odor; STR, stranger social odor.

Fig 2. Data distribution for stranger social odor subscale.

Boxplots depict the median (horizontal black line) and quartile ranges of the distribution, whiskers indicate maximum and minimum values, coloured dots represent data distribution.

Fig 3. Graphical display of the correlation matrix between OAS, AIO, and VOIQ scores and the SOS score and its subscales.

Positive correlations are displayed in red and negative correlations in blue colour. Colour intensity is proportional to the correlation coefficients. Correlation coefficients are displayed inside the boxes.