Exposure to a pleasant odour may increase the sense of reality, but not the sense of presence or realism

Smell can increase the sense of presence, reality, and realism when exposed in a virtual environment. This effect has been found to be increased when the nature of the odour is concordant visually with the scene, i.e. exposure to an unpleasant odour in a filthy virtual kitchen. The objective of this project was to verify whether this effect could be generalised to pleasant odours. Participants were immersed in a virtual apartment with a kitchen where the visual scene suggested that cinnamon apple pies had recently been baked. Participants were randomly and blindly assigned to three conditions: exposition to the ambient air, to a pleasant odour of cinnamon apple pie, or an unpleasant odour of urine. The results indicated that while exposure to the visually concordant pleasant odour did increase the sense of reality in a statistically significant manner, it did not affect the sense of presence or realism. Results also suggested that the visual/olfactory concordance may have facilitated the detection of the pleasant odour. The potential implications of the results, potential explanations for the lack of effect on the sense of presence, as well as potential follow-up research projects are discussed.