In today’s beauty industry, fragrance is being harnessed by brands to promote wellbeing, with celebrities like Charlotte Tilbury and Bella Hadid championing fragrances that claim to boost mood. While the connection between scent and emotions is well-researched, the ability of perfumes to cause specific emotions is less clear, according to neuroscientists. Brands such as Orebella, Clinique, and Charlotte Tilbury are marketing their products as more than just pleasant scents, claiming mood-boosting benefits. Using essential oils and uplifting blends of ingredients, these companies assert that their fragrances can enhance emotions such as happiness, love, and empowerment.
The claims made by perfume makers are based on blinded consumer user trials, where participants apply the fragrance daily and report how it made them feel. In collaboration with International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF), Charlotte Tilbury’s collection of six perfumes was developed based on data from consumer surveys, where participants’ brain activity was recorded in response to different scents. The database used by IFF provides a bank of tested scents that, when analyzed by an algorithm, can create over 500,000 combinations of ingredients that have been associated with specific emotions. This approach helps perfumers develop products that are designed to evoke particular feelings or moods.
The connection between smell and wellbeing lies in the science of how our brains process smells. When we encounter a scent, receptors in our nose detect the chemicals released by the object we’re smelling and send signals to the olfactory bulb, located in the brain. From there, these signals are processed in the amygdala and hippocampus, regions involved in emotion and memory. The neural pathway between scent and emotions is why smells can trigger particular feelings and memories, making fragrance a powerful tool for enhancing mood and wellbeing.
While scent can influence emotions, there are limitations to how much perfume can impact mental health. Neuroscientist Rachel Herz explains that the scent must be connected to an emotional meaning or memory for it to have a significant effect. The placebo effect also plays a role in how we perceive smells, as simply being told that a product has a certain scent can influence our perception of it. However, research shows that smelling something pleasurable can indeed boost mental health, highlighting the importance of smell in maintaining our psychological well-being and sense of place in the world.
Overall, the use of fragrance in beauty products to promote wellbeing is a growing trend, with brands leveraging the science of smell to develop products that claim to enhance mood and emotions. While the exact impact of scents on mental health may vary from person to person, the connection between smell and emotions is well-established in neuroscience. By understanding how our brains process smells and the role of emotional memory in scent perception, beauty brands are able to create products that offer more than just a pleasant fragrance, but also a potential mood-boosting experience for consumers.
