The Observatories

Thursday – Positive Control – Vanilla (room 2)

The famous Spengenberg* experiment shows that spending in women’s clothes shops increases with the release of vanilla scent, due to women spending 50% more time in the shop. We therefore expected people, particularly women, to be attracted to this room.

Result
This didn’t seem to work at all! Nearly twice the number of participants picked the room 1 over the room 2, and in general more men picked the second room, making room 2 the least picked room. It also, strangely, made people less content. Not the positive control that we planned!

*DOI:10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.08.006
*New Scientist article