Can Cologne or Perfume Help You In Your Video Meetings?

In 1987, Van den Berghe and Mace ran a study most people have never heard of. Two hundred women rated two hundred men on attractiveness... on video. The video recordings were made in advance. There was no scent transfer possible. No shared room. No live contact.

Half the men were wearing cologne when the recording was made.

Half were not.

The ones wearing cologne were rated more attractive.

The cologne never reached the women. So what happened?

The cologne worked on the men.

Their bodies registered the scent. Posture shifted. Voice settled. Face softened. The camera picked up the difference and carried it through to the screen the rater was watching, days or weeks later.

Your state shows up on camera before you do.

That is the lesson, and it is bigger than cologne.

Why state matters more than appearance on camera

We tend to think of "looking good on video" as a problem of lighting, framing, wardrobe, and posture. Those things matter, but they are downstream variables. The upstream variable is the internal state of the person on the other side of the lens.

State runs everything that travels through a screen:

• Tone of voice and the micro-pauses in it
• Pace and tempo of speech
• The presence (or absence) of attention in the eyes
• The quality of micro-expressions across the face
• Whether the body looks like it is carrying something or carrying nothing
• What you are able to hear in the other person
• What stories and references are accessible to you in the moment

None of these are under conscious control during the meeting. All of them are shaped by what was true of you when you started.

"When you look good, you feel good. When you feel good, you look great."

There is a 1975 commercial - for a brand of bra, of all things - that landed on a two-sentence tagline that holds masterful influence advice. At first, I thought it was superficial and materialistic, in a way. And by itself, the first phrase might have some of that. That second phrase, though, is sound influence work:

"When you feel good, you look great."

That sentence is the cologne study, said out loud, twelve years earlier.

The path is not appearance → confidence.

The path is internal state → external signal → reception.

What this means for your next video call

Most of us, before a video call, do nothing. We close one tab and open another. We hit "join." We are doing the most important variable of the next hour by accident.

You can change this without changing anything else about how you work.

Before your next video meeting, do one thing on purpose to shift your state.

Examples that work for different people:

• Wear a scent (perfume, cologne, essential oil) that you associate with feeling settled
• Play a specific song for 60 to 90 seconds
• Stand up and stretch for a minute, away from the screen
• Wear clothing that makes you sit straighter (yes, even on a call where only your torso is visible)
• Splash cold water on your face
• Watch a 30-second video clip that reliably makes you laugh

The technique is not the point. The choice is the point. Default sends you into the call carrying whatever you happened to be carrying. Intention sends you in carrying what you decided to carry.

The principle, named

In the 7 Simple Rules of Influence I teach, the first and most important rule is manage your state. The other six principles are certainly important - making others comfortable, removing objections, moving people with what moves them, remarking on remarkables, making it easy, managing your action - but it's incredibly high-yield to run it through state first.

The cologne study is a small piece of evidence for a much larger pattern: what you bring with you into a room (or onto a screen) is what people receive before you say a word.

You cannot always control what is happening to you.

You can almost always control what you are doing with yourself.

That is where your influence actually begins.

Try this

Pick one thing (even if it is small/cheap/repeatable) and do it before your next video call. Notice the first three minutes. Then do it again the next call.

A month from now you will have a small personal repertoire of state-management moves that work for you specifically. That repertoire is worth more than most communication training you could buy.

For a longer list to start from, I keep a free PDF at DrTori.com/101 called 101 Ways to Manage Your State. Most of them are free. Some of them are weird. One of them will work for you.

Reference: Van den Berghe, P. L., & Mace, R. (1987). The influence of fragrance on women's perceptions of men's physical attractiveness and personality. Ethology and Sociobiology, 8(3), 173–186.