From the very earliest days of public cinema (moving pictures), there has been consideration about how odors and scents might influence the viewer’s experience. While initially this was primarily a concern with how to eliminate the malodor of the cinema-goers themselves, in more recent times, there have been a number of well-publicized attempts to add synchronized pleasant (and, on occasion, also unpleasant) scents to “enhance” the cinema experience. While early solutions such as AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision were beset by technical challenges, low-tech scratch and sniff (Odorama) and, more recently, Edible Cinema-type solutions (where the audience get to consume flavourful, and often aromatic, morsels in time with the events on screen) have proved somewhat more successful. Nevertheless, there are a number of key psychological factors that will likely inhibit the uptake of scented cinema in the future, even should the technical and financial issues (associated with retrofitting cinemas, and providing the appropriate fragrances) one day be satisfactorily resolved. These include the phenomenon of “inattentional anosmia” as well as the “fundamental misattribution error,” whereby people (who are, by-and-large, visually-dominant) tend to attribute their enjoyment to the action seen on screen, rather than to smell, and hence are unlikely to pay a premium for the latter.

从最早的公共电影院（电影）开始，就一直在考虑气味和气味如何影响观看者的体验。最初，这主要是关于如何消除看电影的人自己的恶臭的关注，但是在最近一段时间，已经进行了许多广为人知的尝试，试图将同步的愉悦（有时甚至是不愉快的）气味添加到电影院中。 “增强”电影体验。尽管诸如AromaRama和Smell-O-Vision之类的早期解决方案受到技术挑战，低技术的刮擦和嗅探（Odorama），以及最近的可食用电影类型的解决方案（观众可以在屏幕上看到事件的同时及时食用美味且通常是芳香的食物）。尽管如此，仍有许多关键的心理因素将来可能会抑制有香味的电影院的使用，即使有一天能令人满意地解决技术和财务问题（与电影院的改建以及提供合适的香水有关）。其中包括“注意力不集中的失眠”现象和“根本性的错误归因错误”，人们（大体上，视觉上占主导地位的人们）倾向于将其享受归因于屏幕上看到的动作，而不是归因于气味，因此不太可能为后者支付溢价。