How Much Does Smell Matter to You?
The memories it brings back, how often you use it, and what you decide because of it
Some people sniff the milk, the towel and the new book; others could not tell you what their own kitchen smells like. Researchers at a smell and taste clinic in Dresden noticed in their patients that smell mattered far more to some people than to others, and built a questionnaire to measure exactly that. It turned out to have three parts - the feelings and memories smells trigger, how much you use your nose day to day, and how much smell drives your decisions.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
This is not a test of how well you smell - it is about how much smell matters in your life. Answer about ordinary days.
What it measures
The three main subscales of the Importance of Olfaction questionnaire: association (emotions, memories and judgements that smells trigger), application (how much you use smell in daily life) and consequence (how much smell drives what you decide to do). It differs from high sensitivity, which is about all the senses and feeling overwhelmed, not about valuing one sense.
Based on: Importance of Olfaction questionnaire (Croy, Buschhüter, Seo, Negoias & Hummel, 2010)
Possible results
Association
The feelings, memories and judgements that smells trigger in you.
Application
How much you actively use your sense of smell in daily life.
Consequence
How much smell changes what you decide to do.
Common questions
Does caring about smell mean I have a better sense of smell?
Not necessarily. A 2022 Danish study compared this questionnaire with a standard smell test in over 170 young adults and found only a weak link between how much people valued smell and how well they could smell. Valuing a sense and having a sharp one are different things - much as loving music does not guarantee perfect pitch.
Why are smell memories so strong?
Smell signals reach brain areas involved in emotion and memory more directly than the other senses do, and smells are often first met in emotionally charged moments. That is why a scent can bring back a scene you had not thought about for decades, with its feeling intact. How strongly this happens varies a lot between people, which is what the first bar measures.
Is this the same as being a highly sensitive person?
No. High sensitivity describes a general tendency to process all kinds of stimuli deeply and to feel overwhelmed more easily. This test is narrower: it asks how much one sense, smell, matters to your emotions, habits and decisions. Someone can score high here and feel perfectly relaxed in a loud, bright room. Quinthea has a separate test for high sensitivity.
Sources
- Croy, I., Buschhüter, D., Seo, H.-S., Negoias, S., & Hummel, T. (2010). Individual significance of olfaction: Development of a questionnaire. European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology. doi:10.1007/s00405-009-1054-0
- Fjaeldstad, A. W., Konieczny, D. T., Fernandes, H., Gaini, L. M., Vejlø, M., & Sandberg, K. (2022). The relationship between individual significance of olfaction and measured olfactory function. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences. doi:10.1016/j.crbeha.2022.100076
- Tchemerinsky Konieczny, D., Wieck Fjaeldstad, A., & Sandberg, K. (2024). Test-retest reliability and validity of the Importance of Olfaction Questionnaire in Denmark. PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0269211
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Importance of Olfaction questionnaire, so scores are not comparable to its norms. Its small fourth subscale is left out. This is not a smell test: in a Danish study, how much people valued smell was only weakly linked to how well they could actually smell. If you have noticed a sudden or lasting loss or change in your sense of smell, talk to a doctor.