The Impact Of Olfactics On Personal And Professional Life: A Discussion

Non-Verbal Communication and Olfaction

Discuss about the Impact of Olfactics on Personal and Professional Life.

The essay is a discussion on the impact of Olfactics on personal and professional life. Olfactics refers to a means of non- verbal communication based on smell.  According to various psychologist, sociologists and linguists believes that the evolution of the human language has been through a system that undertook communication non-verbally. These scholars consider the concept of communication and language as different. There are various nonlinguistic ways possessed by humans that include use of face, arms, hands and personal space for the purpose of communication. The importance of non-verbal communication thus requires special attention. The essay therefore begins with a description of non-verbal communication. As the essay proceeds, one can also find a brief description about Olfaction. There is also a description of the coding and perception of Olfaction mentioned in the essay. The essay also vividly describes about the impacts of Olfactics on personal and professional life. The discussion closed by drawing in a conclusion by throwing light on the positive side of Olfactics (Pandey 2017).

The significance of non-verbal communication had a rapid growth in the last decade and now finds a wide application in media, business, interpersonal relationship, politics and education (Knapp, Hall and Horgan 2013). In spite of its importance, there still exist people who pay little attention to the body signals and non-verbal messages as they mostly concentrate on words.

The biggest misconceptions lie in the fact about the things said and the way of its presentation. However, the reality is only 7 percent of information is transmitted through the words while the 93 percent of the remaining communication is through non-verbal means (Burgoon, Guerreroand Floyd 2016). The failure to de code and read the non-verbal messages not only leads to continuous misunderstandings but also various problems related to communication.

The signals put across through non-verbal means make the messages more convincing and powerful. In this context, trying to motivate and convince, another person in doing a task while maintaining an unanimated facial expression, gestures and tone will make one not only sound unconvincing that will also lack the motivation factor (Leathers and Eaves2015). The expression of non-verbal communication is not just through body language, facial expression or gestures but it might also include touch, special distance, eye contact, and spatial distance between two or more people, body movements or kinesics, smell, tone of voice, appearance or even silence.  Facial expression is a non-verbal communication that can create quite an impact through eye contact. Touch is another form non-verbal communication that can put across a lot of information. Personal distance, intimate distance, public and social distance are some the criteria of non-verbal communication that helps in delivering information. Kinetics, the study of body movements in space, also helps in transmitting information by non-verbal means. Chronemics is another form of non-verbal communication that refers to the use of time while Olfactics refers to the study of time and is a form of non-verbal communication where people’s reaction based on the smell (Siegman 2014).

Coding and Perception of Olfaction

Olfaction refers to chemoreception that helps in forming a sense of smell. Olfaction is a non-verbal means of communication that also helps in detection of pheromones, food and hazards (Doty 2015). Olfaction helps in integration with other senses to help form the sense of flavor. When the odorants binds to the specific site on the olfactory receptors in nasal cavity then occurrence of Olfaction takes place.

Olfactics refers to non-verbal means of communication based on the study of smell. The common site is people tend to react to others based on their smell (Samantaray 2013). For both men and women, smell represents an important subconscious factor for choosing a life partner. However, during interaction too much perfume or body odor can make an attractive person look repulsive.

The coding ofolfactory information by the brain for allowing proper perception still requires proper understanding (Wood 2013). The receptors break the odorant once detected and then the brain puts it back together for perception and identification. The odorant is bound to the receptors that help in recognizing a specific feature or functional group. This is why determining the chemical nature of the odorant is vital.

After the odorant is bound, there is activation of the receptor that sends signal to the glomeruli. Each glomerulus receives signals from multiple receptors and help in detecting similar features of the odorant. There is activation of various receptors due to odorant’s chemical feature that also activates the glomeruli. The signals that travel to the brain are combination of activated glomeruli that helps in encoding the various chemical features of the odorant (Neuliep 2017.). The brain then together puts the activation pattern for identification and perception. The distributed code thus helps the brain in detecting specific odor even when mingled with various background odors.

The layout of the structures of the brain corresponds to the physical features of the stimuli known as topographic coding(Matsumoto, Hwangand Frank 2016).The concept of Olfaction based on similar analogies but here the layout corresponds with the chemical features.

Olfactics, the sense of smell, is the most fascinating of all the human sensation. According to (Kossen, Kiernanand Lawrence 2012), human beings possess the capability of detecting around ten thousand compounds via smell. In this context, human beings possess more olfactory genes compared to the other types of gene.

The lack of understanding amongst the human beings about the concept of Olfcation may be due to the lack of vocabulary and discouragement about smell (Leathersand Eaves 2015). There are various countries particularly the United States there has been an obsession about masking certain smells that particularly included odor related to human body. This made United States the biggest users of fragrance around the world. Some brands of soap make use of huge pounds of fragrance a year. Western countries consider body scent only as distasteful and unpleasant thereby enforcing greater efforts in removing them.

Impacts of Olfactics on Personal and Professional Life

According to (Kossen, Kiernanand Lawrence 2012), although varied cultures might have certain smell preferences but there are scents that have a universal preference since they have evolutionary and biological roots. Sometimes the culture mediates preferences.

The impact of Olfactics in personal life lies in the fact that in addition to being acting as a sex attractant it has a political implication in marking social class distinctions. According to (Leathers and Eaves 2015), Olfcatics plays a significant role in constructing the power of relations. There is existence of certain terms related to smell that helps in voicing repugnance and antagonism towards others in the professional arena. Most often it is seen in the professional arena that people mostly refers to the people they dislike as the stinkers. Suspicion regarding someone always communicated to the peers by drawing in a comparison with the smell of a rat. On the other hand, when something goes amiss or is not right then it get mentioned, as something smelt fishy.

Claims suggest that Olfactics used for categorizing people into power, status and moral class. This however needs understanding that smells are not intrinsically immoral or moral but the kinds of thoughts associated with them gives them the necessary moral significance.

The smell of a person is not only a moral statement and individual emission but is also a social attribute that specifically signifies the members of the subordinate groups. Sometimes labeling the subordinate group as smelly may give rise to religious, ethnic and racial hatred and prejudice. Micro cultural and subordinate groups often possess olfactory characteristics that are negative. Perceived odors that are foul often legitimize inequalities and remain the primary criteria through which negative identity imposed on a races or class. Various cultures lead to the establishment of norms for unacceptable and acceptable scents that has association with the human body. When groups or individuals fails to fit in the acceptability realm then their smell provides a signal that something they either are not mentally or physically right (Pandey 2017). 

The moral ideal of equality and harmony amongst different races and classes runs up through a static brick wall of unshakable disgust inspired by Olfactics. Historically in many cultures, women considered as fragrant sex unless they challenged the social order dominated by the mails or were prostitutes. 

Conclusion:

The report ends in the light by discussing the impacts of Olfactics on the professional and personal life. Olfactics defined by people’s sense of smell discussed in relevance to the human communication. The sense of smell is a vital biological function that triggers senses of human beings. Thus, the sense of smell plays a key role in determining the sensory life of human beings. The essay thus gives a vivid insight on how Olfcatics influences the personal as well as the professional life. The crucial role that Olfactics plays in maintaining social relationships motivates the emphasis of smell. Most cultures assign meaning to the smell often displayed by people wearing them. Olfactics is also a vital element that bonds humans and initiates mating. It also cites empirical evidence that shows that smell have the power to hasten puberty, influence orientation sexually and mediate menstrual cycle of women.

References:

Burgoon, J.K., Guerrero, L.K. and Floyd, K., 2016. Nonverbal communication. Routledge.

Knapp, M.L., Hall, J.A. and Horgan, T.G., 2013. Nonverbal communication in human interaction. Cengage Learning.

Kossen, C., Kiernan, E.F. and Lawrence, J.E., 2012. Communicating for success (pp. 110-129). Pearson Australia.

Leathers, D.G. and Eaves, M., 2015. Successful nonverbal communication: Principles and applications. Routledge.

Mayo, C. and Henley, N.M. eds., 2012. Gender and nonverbal behavior. Springer Science & Business Media.

Neuliep, J.W., 2017. Intercultural communication: A contextual approach. Sage Publications.

Pandey, R., 2017. Understanding and use of Non-verbal communication in classroom by teacher educator of secondary teacher training institutions of Ranchi, Jharkhand. research journal of social sciences, 8(9).

Samantaray, S., 2013. Non-Verbal Communication: The Use of Chromatics in Toni Morrison’s Novels. Language in India, 13(12).

Siegman, A.W., 2014. Nonverbal behavior and communication. Psychology Press.

Wood, J.T., 2013. Communication mosaics: An introduction to the field of communication. Cengage Learning.