Smelling Speech Sounds: Association of odors with texture-related ideophones

Odors are often difficult to describe verbally, and little is known about the association of odors with the words that describe them. Following the literature on crossmodal correspondences between odors and sounds/haptics, this study aimed to reveal how odors are associated with the words describing textures and haptics in the Japanese language. Fifty participants smelled 17 food-related odors (e.g., lemon, pepper) and matched the odors with words related to texture (e.g., sakusaku), haptics (e.g., soft, dry), and emotion (e.g., positive). The experiment was conducted with and without the verbal description of odor names. The results demonstrated that each odor was mainly categorized into words related to the concepts of (a) juicy/cool/jiggly/positive, (b) smooth/moist/soft, or (c) hard/rough/dry, regardless of whether participants smelled the odors with or without the verbal description. Our findings reveal novel odor-sound/haptic associations and demonstrate how odors can be described verbally. Practical applications: People find it difficult to verbalize or communicate various odors. This study contributes to the literature on odor-sound/haptic correspondences by showing that the odors are associated with texture-related ideophones and haptic words. Specifically, the results demonstrated that each odor was mainly categorized into words related to the concepts of (a) juicy/cool/jiggly/positive, (b) smooth/moist/soft, or (c) hard/rough/dry. These findings are relevant to marketing communications involving odors and emphasize the potential importance of the texture-related ideophones and haptic words when marketers want to effectively communicate odors with consumers.