People differ in both their sensitivity to odorants and the qualities of odorants' odors.
For example, for many people pemenone has no odor, while others find it to smell putrid, others smell it as grassy or vegetable-like and still others report it having a floral odor. These specific anosmias and allosmias are likely due to genetically determined differences. An understanding of them should predict patterns of similarities and differences in olfactory receptors and mechanisms, and permit the building of a model for odor perception. Since such mixture phenomena are dependent upon the method used to establish the expected intensities, the predictors are crucial. I am investigating the effects of context variables and their implications for mixture psychophysics.