Evaluating the generalizability of the normative odor rating across cultures

Olfactory perception varies across cultures, yet the cross-cultural generalizability of normative odor ratings remains underexplored. This study investigates the generalizability of normative odor ratings to a German-speaking sample by assessing 24 odors across eight dimensions—familiarity, frequency, pleasantness, irritability, context availability, discriminability, age of acquisition, and verbalizability—in 124 German-speaking participants (Mage = 22.36, SD = 3.24). Building on Moss et al.’s (2016) methodology with English-speaking participants, we examined the consistency of these dimensions, the influence of odor familiarity, and the role of odor-specific properties versus individual differences. Results revealed significant intercorrelations among the dimensions, except for age of acquisition, which negatively correlated with others, confirming the importance of early exposure in olfactory perceptual saliency and linguistic accessibility. For high-familiar odors, strong correlations with Moss et al.’s ratings were found for familiarity (r = .805), frequency (r = .799), pleasantness (r = .792), context availability (r = .794), discriminability (r = .967), and verbalizability (r = .844), and age of acquisition (r = .750), but not for irritability (r = .495). Low-familiar odors showed only a moderate correlation for verbalizability (r = .530), highlighting the role of exposure in cross-cultural consistency. Variance across odors significantly exceeded variance across participants, indicating reliable differentiation by odor properties. These findings suggest that normative odor ratings show strong cross-sample consistency across the two samples, particularly for familiar odors. This study supports the utility of normative ratings in olfactory research while highlighting the role of familiarity and context in cross-cultural perception.