Evaluate an example of a snapshot study . Dematte, Osterbauer and Spencer (2007)

Evaluate a study in terms of it being a snapshot study.

Dematte, Osterbauer and Spencer (2007)

Dematte, Osterbauer and Spencer conducted a laboratory experiment on sixteen female participants to investigate whether the perceived attractiveness of faces is affected by olfactory cues. Specifically, the study investigated whether a pleasant or an unpleasant smell would affect judgements of facial attractiveness.

In this respect, the study was conducted at one point of time; for instance participants were seated in front of a computer screen and were told to rate the picture appears on the screen after olfactory cue is sprayed. This procedure was repeated on 40 trials where the participant had to describe the picture as attractive or unattractive after smelling the spray. Therefore, this experiment can be described as a snapshot study as it is reliable and can be presented as a pilot research before conducting a complete study. The results obtained are time-efficient as they have been gathered at one point of the study under several controls, such as the amount of olfactory cue that would be used by the Olfactometer for each independent variable, the amount of time the participants are given to make their judgments etc. Hence, a conclusion can be made on how these results are effective in real-life situations because the smell of a person would judge their facial attractiveness, such as pleasant smell would make them attractive for others whereas unpleasant smell like body odour or rubber would show unattractive appearance.