|Question 15Verbal

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Researchers who study olfaction—the sense of smell—define valence as a person's perception of how pleasant an odor is. Conventional wisdom holds that valence is culturally mediated. A team of scientists led by Artin Arshamian evaluated this view by testing how people from ten different places—including the Semelai people from a small community in the Malay Peninsula and the Chachi people from a small community in Ecuador—ranked ten odors from most pleasant to least pleasant. In general, respondents ranked scents similarly regardless of where they lived, overwhelmingly choosing the odorant eugenol as more pleasant than caprylic acid. These results show that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
valence may affect cultural traditions more strongly than researchers had previously predicted.
A
the respondents agreed more often on unpleasant odors than they did on pleasant ones.
B
the conventional belief that odor pleasantness can be objectively measured is questionable.
C
the standard view of culture's role in olfactory valence may be unsound.
D