Unconscious odour conditioning 25 years later: Revisiting and extending ‘Kirk-Smith, Van Toller and Dodd’

International audience; The pioneering work by Kirk-Smith, Van Toller, and Dodd [Kirk-Smith, M. D., Van Toller, C., & Dodd, G. H. (1983). Unconscious odour conditioning in human subjects. Biological Psychology, 17, 221–231], established that an unnoticed odorant paired with an emotionally meaningful task can influence mood and attitudes when the odorant alone is re-encountered subsequently. This study was particularly important in highlighting unconscious odour learning processes as they may happen in everyday life. However, it was severely criticized by Black and Smith [Black, S. L., & Smith, D. G. (1994). Has odor conditioning been demonstrated? A critique of “Unconscious odour conditioni…