Affective and Cognitive Consequences of Malodorous Pollution

The effects of malodorous pollution upon evaluative and cognitive judgments were examined in two experiments. In one experiment, 24 male and 24 female undergraduates evaluated paintings, peers in photographs, and persons described by adjectives while breathing air that was either unpolluted or polluted by ethyl mercoptan. As predicted, evaluations of unfamiliar, neutral, but not extreme stimuli were lowered by pollution. In a second experiment, 40 males and 40 females were exposed to one of four IS-minute sequences of odor and no-odor while they worked on simple (arithmetic) and complex (proofreading) tasks. Half of these subjects were led to believe that they could avoid exposure, and the other half were led to believe that exposure was uncontrollable. As hypothesized, malodor impaired performances on complex but not simple tasks; as was also hypothesized, exposure produced behavioral aftereffects in the form of lowered tolerance for frustration when subjects had been deprived of control. Under conditions of low control, aftereffects were greatest when subjects were exposed to malodor for relatively long periods of time and were tested immediately after exposure. It was concluded that malodorous pollution exerts effects similar to ones produced by noise, density, and other stressors.