Variability and Coherence in the Description of Complex Perfumes

This study of olfaction is particular, by the specificities of this sensorial modality. These particularities result in difficulties and a wide inter individual variability in the description of fragrances. We study the effect of two tasks (sorting and comparison of triplets) followed by verbalizations on the perception of similarities between stimuli, the number of generated characteristics and on the inter individual variability. The stimuli are nine ladies’ fragrances, the participants twenty-eight inexperienced women. The results show that the perception of similarities between perfumes is close, whatever the task may be, but the number of generated characteristics is more important with the sorting task and the inter individual variability more important with the triad task. We discuss the idea that it seems possible to limit the individual variability in odours description, controlling context effects.