Soft Soft Research: affective responses to perfumed fabric softeners

This Week’s Press-Release-Trumpeted Study of the Week is:

“Seeing, smelling, feeling! Is there an influence of color on subjective affective responses to perfumed fabric softeners?” Christelle Porcherot, Sylvain Delplanque, Nadine Gaudreau, Isabelle Cayeux, Food Quality and Preference,  epub 6 July 2012. The authors, at Firmenich, in Geneva, Switzerland and at the University of Geneva, explain:

” The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of color on the verbal measurement of emotions in response to different perfumes in fabric softeners, the hypothesis being that color-perfume congruent pairs will induce enhanced positive emotional responses. In a first experiment, 102 participants were asked to report their feelings for nine perfumed fabric softeners, which were perfumed with one of three perfume variants and presented as one of three color variants…. he optimization of color-perfume pairing did not result in a significant increase of the subjective affective response. More generally, this study underlines the predominant role of perfume in the emotional response and a more limited influence of color.”