Psychological bias caused by notification of odor name in sensory evaluation test of odor》.pdf

Building and Environment 44 (2009) 1350–1355 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Building and Environment journal homepage: www.els /locate/buildenv Psychological bias caused by notification of odor name in sensory evaluation test of odor Toshio Yamanaka a, *, Kazunobu Sagara a, Hisashi Kotani a, Akihisa Takemura a, Misako Fujiwara b a Department of Architectural Engineering, Division of Global Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan b Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Japan a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: ‘‘Tatami’’ is a traditional Japanese building material used as a floor mat made with rush. It used to be said Received 6 April 2008 that the smell of tatami is preferred by many Japanese, because almost all Japanese houses have had Received in revised form tatami rooms since early times. In this paper, the psychological bias of notification of material name was 12 September 2008 investigated. This kind of psychological bias seems to be a very important factor that affects the result of Accepted 15 September 2008 sensory test. In the sensory evaluation of odor, the name of the source material is usually concealed, but in this paper, Keywords: odor evaluation tests were conducted where the source material name is given to the subjects before its Odor Sensory evaluation