Global study of social odor awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10,794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics

Preferred interpersonal distances: a global comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Voluntary counselling and testing: uptake, impact on sexual behaviour, and HIV incidence in a rural Zimbabwean cohort.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the determinants of uptake of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services, to assess changes in sexual risk behaviour following VCT, and to compare HIV incidence amongst testers and non-testers. METHODS: Prospective population-based cohort study of adult men and women in the Manicaland province of eastern Zimbabwe. Demographic, socioeconomic, sexual behaviour and VCT utilization data were collected at baseline (1998-2000) and follow-up (3 years later). HIV status was determined by HIV-1 antibody detection. In addition to services provided by the government and non-governmental organizations, a mobile VCT clinic was available at study sites. RESULTS: Lifetime uptake of VCT increased from under 6% to 11% at follow-up. Age, increasing education and knowledge of HIV were associated with VCT uptake. Women who took a test were more likely to be HIV positive and to have greater HIV knowledge and fewer total lifetime partners. After controlling for demographic characteristics, sexual behaviour was not independently associated with VCT uptake. Women who tested positive reported increased consistent condom use in their regular partnerships. However, individuals who tested negative were more likely to adopt more risky behaviours in terms of numbers of partnerships in the last month, the last year and in concurrent partnerships. HIV incidence during follow-up did not differ between testers and non-testers. CONCLUSION: Motivation for VCT uptake was driven by knowledge and education rather than sexual risk. Increased sexual risk following receipt of a negative result may be a serious unintended consequence of VCT. It should be minimized with appropriate pre- and post-test counselling

Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies