The Unpleasantness of Perception: Affective Perception and Implicit Bias

In this paper, I investigate how the affective component of smell can be implicitly biased and, more broadly, I provide reasons for the importance of taking into account the affective component of perceptual implicit bias. After introducing the notion of perceptual implicit bias, I delineate the case of affective perception for the sense of smell: since olfactory experience typically has a strong affective load, affective properties should, in those cases, be considered part of the perceptual states themselves. Next, I explore why certain smells are perceived to be pleasant or unpleasant, defending the hypothesis that the cultural setting of the perceiver plays an important role in determining the perceived pleasantness of smells. Then, I argue that some instances of affective olfactory perception should be conceived as cases of implicit bias, conditioned by the cultural context of the perceiver. Lastly, I sketch general considerations on the importance of including the affective component in the study of implicitly biased perception.