Exposure to an unpleasant odour increases the sense of Presence in virtual reality

Abstract

While olfactory cues affect the everyday human experience in the physical world, few studies have empirically examined the effect they could have on the human experience in virtual reality (VR). This project’s goal was to determine whether the exposure to olfactory stimuli would affect the senses of Presence (primary measure), Reality and Realism (exploratory measures) in VR. In a virtual kitchen devoid of obvious visual cues linking the visual scene to an odour, three groups of 20 randomly assigned participants (12 females and 8 males per group), unaware of the potential exposure to olfactory stimuli, were exposed to either ambient air, a pleasant odour, or an unpleasant odour. The results reveal that the unpleasant odour had a statistically significant effect on the sense of Presence (as measured by repeated brief measures of Presence and the Independent Television Commission Sense of Presence Inventory), but the pleasant one did not. The lower perceived intensity of the pleasant odour may have contributed to its lower detection rate which, in turn, may have contributed to the pleasant odour’s lack of effect on the sense of Presence. Neither of the olfactory stimuli had an effect on either the sense of Reality or the sense of Realism.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Exposure to an unpleasant odour increases the sense of Presence
in virtual reality
Oliver Baus
1,2
•Ste
´phane Bouchard
2
Received: 7 March 2016 / Accepted: 26 September 2016 / Published online: 8 October 2016
ÓSpringer-Verlag London 2016
Abstract While olfactory cues affect the everyday human
experience in the physical world, few studies have empir-
ically examined the effect they could have on the human
experience in virtual reality (VR). This project’s goal was
to determine whether the exposure to olfactory stimuli
would affect the senses of Presence (primary measure),
Reality and Realism (exploratory measures) in VR. In a
virtual kitchen devoid of obvious visual cues linking the
visual scene to an odour, three groups of 20 randomly
assigned participants (12 females and 8 males per group),
unaware of the potential exposure to olfactory stimuli, were
exposed to either ambient air, a pleasant odour, or an
unpleasant odour. The results reveal that the unpleasant
odour had a statistically significant effect on the sense of
Presence (as measured by repeated brief measures of
Presence and the Independent Television Commission
Sense of Presence Inventory), but the pleasant one did not.
The lower perceived intensity of the pleasant odour may
have contributed to its lower detection rate which, in turn,
may have contributed to the pleasant odour’s lack of effect
on the sense of Presence. Neither of the olfactory stimuli
had an effect on either the sense of Reality or the sense of
Realism.
Keywords Virtual reality Presence Olfaction Odours 
Reality Realism
1 Introduction
Odours play an important role in everyday lives. While
pleasant ones can lead to positive affective states, positive
moods, positive ratings of other individuals, as well as to a
lower sensation of pain, unpleasant ones have been shown to
have the opposite effect (respectively, Alaoui-Ismaı
¨li et al.
1997; Kirk-Smith and Booth 1990; Rattaz et al. 2001). An
odour can facilitate the autobiographical memory ret rieval of
an event associated with that particular odour (Doop et al.
2006), and even lead to olfactory conditioned reactions such
as pre-chemotherapy nausea (Siegel 1999). Odours can also
affect behaviour. For example, while a pleasant odour can
lead to increased gambling in casinos (Hirsch 1995), an
unpleasant one can contribute to aggression (Ratey 2001).
Yet, despite these important potential effects (for review, see
Baus and Bouchard 2010), their integration in virtual reality
(VR) has been relatively rare. Furthermore, very few publi-
cations have addressed the question of how odours might
affect the quality of the human experience in VR from an
empirical point of view. It was the primary objective of this
project to quantify this potential effect.
The examination of the effect of odours on the human
experience in VR intends to contribute to give developers
indices on whether it is worthwhile integrating olfactory
cues in VR applications. Are there potential benefits to the
quality of human experience in VR? Do the characteristics
of the odours need to be taken into account? To this end,
this project investigated the effect of exposure to pleasant
and unpleasant odours on the senses of Presence (primary
measure), Reality and Realism (exploratory measures).
&Oliver Baus
obaus@yahoo.ca
1
University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
2
De
´partement de psychoe
´ducation et de psychologie,
Universite
´du Que
´bec en Outaouais, Pavillon Alexandre
Tache
´, 283 boulevard Alexandre Tache
´, Case postale 1250,
succursale Hull, Gatineau, QC J8X3X7, Canada
123
Virtual Reality (2017) 21:59–74
DOI 10.1007/s10055-016-0299-3
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