Psychology, 2020, 11, 2066-2080 https://www.scirp.org/journal/psych ISSN Online: 2152-7199 ISSN Print: 2152-7180 DOI: 10.4236/psych.2020.1112129 Dec. 31, 2020 2066 Psychology Psychological Implications of Nostalgic Scents of Childhood Eirini Petratou, Nasia Paradisi, Odysseas Diamantis, Anastasios Stalikas Department of Psychology Panteion, University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece Abstract There is wide-ranging literature on the emotional effects of odors but, so far, little focus on scents that evoke nostalgia and their psychological functions. This study examines the effects of nostalgia-induced scents, more specifically what are the psychological implications of scents from childhood that evoke nostalgia. The test participants sampled five childhood scents, rating each scent as to the extent to which they were familiar and elicited nostalgia and positive emotions. The study found that one of the tested childhood scents, bubblegum, was considered the most familiar but also the most nostalgic, eli- citing higher self-esteem, social connection, optimism, and inspiration. Our research findings on olfaction contribute to the existing small body of expe- rimental research on olfactory nostalgia and facilitate the understanding of the psychological implications, triggers and affective response linked with nostalgia-induced scents. Keywords Positive Psychology, Nostalgia, Childhood Scents, Senses, Positive Emotions “Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.” Alain de Botton, Twitter (2014) 1. Introduction Scents are powerful triggers of a vast array of emotions and feelings and can evoke particular memories such as childhood memories. As a matter of fact, there are scents that are strongly linked with autobiographical childhood memo- ries and these odor-evoked memories are highly emotional (Laird, 1935; Hurz & Cupchik, 1992; Herz et al., 2004). Several studies in the lab have demonstrated that scent-evoked memories are more emotional than memories triggered by How to cite this paper: Petratou, E., Para- disi, N., Diamantis, O., & Stalikas, A. (2020). Psychological Implications of Nostalgic Scents of Childhood. Psychology, 11, 2066-2080. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2020.1112129 Received: November 27, 2020 Accepted: December 28, 2020 Published: December 31, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access