It’s fascinating how unaware we all are of what really drives our behaviour.

We’re convinced by our conscious minds that what we do is driven by what we decide on the basis of our beliefs.

We are kidding ourselves.

More evidence appeared this week in a study that was conducted to look at how people’s fairness and generosity could be influenced by scents.

All of you who have read my eBook The Secret of Selling will already be making the most of this influential mechanism in the human unconscious, but for those who aren’t here are more reasons why you really should!

Researchers set up two studies using two different rooms. In each case one room had the clean, fresh, citrus scent of Windex, the other did not.

Subsequent questioning showed that none of the participants were aware of the scent’s presence in the room and that their mood was not a factor.

What did they discover?

People were given a test to explore fairness: they were given some money ($12) and asked to share a proportion of it with someone in another room who was trusting them to divide it fairly, but didn’t know how much money was involved.

In the room with the subliminal, fresh lemon scent the average amount shared was $5.33. In the unscented room the average amount was just $2.81!

In the second study they explored charitable behaviour. Participants were asked about volunteering for a charitable cause and their willingness to donate money to it.

In the scented room people were more interested in volunteering and 22% were willing to donate money, compared with just 6% of those in the other room.

Of course, all these people believed they were doing what they wanted.

Whilst the mechanisms involved are not well understood the evidence is consistent and compelling: the right scent can lead people to feel more safer, more positive and more obliging. It can change how they feel about a product or service too.

If you haven’t already, I really would urge you to harness the power of subliminal associations by reading The Secret of Selling today; it could be the most important book you ever buy for your business.

And yes, there are visual subliminal associations you can harness if you sell on-line.

Source: Brigham Young University (2009, October 26). Clean Smells Promote Moral Behavior

Image courtesy: Shandi-lee Cox