據英國《每日郵報》報道，研究人員發現，如果從女人身上聞到香氣，那么那個女人的臉看上去會更迷人。

女人的臉在有香氣時顯得更漂亮是因為香氣的愉悅和容貌的美麗都融合為同一個心理評價。

然而，研究人員也發現，香氣并不能讓人顯得更年輕，而只能顯得更漂亮。

Women's faces become more attractive if a pleasant smell is present, researchers have found.

They say that odours can change the way we look at attractiveness and perceive each other.

However, they found the effect does not extend to making people appear younger - simply prettier.

The research from the Monell Chemical Senses Center reveals that women's faces are rated as more attractive in the presence of pleasant odors.

'Odor pleasantness and facial attractiveness integrate into one joint emotional evaluation,' said Janina Seubert, a cognitive neuroscientist who led the research.

'This may indicate a common site of neural processing in the brain.'

Perfumes and scented products have been used for centuries as a way to enhance overall personal appearance.

Previous studies had shown perception of facial attractiveness could be influenced when using unpleasant vs. pleasant odors.

However, it was not known whether odors influence the actual visual perception of facial features or alternatively, how faces are emotionally evaluated by the brain.

The current study design centered on the principle that judging attractiveness and age involve two distinct perceptual processing methods: attractiveness is regarded as an emotional process while judgments of age are believed to be cognitive, or rationally-based.

This suggests that olfactory and visual cues independently influence judgments of facial attractiveness.

With regard to the cognitive task of age evaluation, visual age cues (more wrinkles and blemishes) were linked to older age perception.

However, odor pleasantness had a mixed effect.

Visual age cues strongly influenced age perception during pleasant odor stimulation, making older faces look older and younger faces look younger.

This effect was weakened in the presence of unpleasant odors, so that younger and older faces were perceived to be more similar in age.

Jean-Marc Dessirier, Lead Scientist at Unilever and a co-author on the study said, 'These findings have fascinating implications in terms of how pleasant smells may help enhance natural appearance within social settings.

'The next step will be to see if the findings extend to evaluation of male facial attractiveness.'

（來源：Daily Mail 編輯：丹妮）