One of my primary goals for this blog is to reinforce, strongly and frequently, the notion of neuropsychological humility – the understanding that our perceptions and memories are deeply flawed and biased. There appears to be almost no limit to the extent to which people can deceive themselves into believing bizarre things.<\/p>\n
Psychologists have documented these flaws and biases in numerous ways, and when confronted with demonstrations of such people tend to be amused, as if they were being entertained by a magic show, but do not necessarily apply the lessons to themselves and their own lives. This is one of the key differences, in my opinion, between skeptics (critical thinkers) and non-skeptics – a working knowledge of self-deception.<\/p>\n
With that in mind,\u00a0here is yet another study<\/a> showing that extrinsic factors and expectation affect our sensory perceptions. I will say right off that this is a small study involving only 15 subjects, but given the nature of the results it is still useful.<\/p>\n The researchers tested 4 champagne experts, 6 intermediates, and 5 novices with a blinded test of 7 different champagnes and sparkling wines ranging in price from\u00a0\u00a318 to\u00a0\u00a3400. In addition to being blinded to the price, they were blind-folded so they could not see the color of what they were tasting. The results were essentially all over the place, showing no clear correlation to price or expertise. The intermediates and experts rated the\u00a0\u00a340 the highest, while the novices rated the\u00a0\u00a375 the highest. The novices and intermediates rated the\u00a0\u00a3400 bottle among the lowest while the experts rated it average.<\/p>\n That much is not surprising – price does not necessarily relate to objective quality. For those on a limited budget, it is nice to know that inexpensive sparkling wine fares just as well as pricey champagne. Essentially, find something cheap that you like.<\/p>\n The tasters were also asked to estimate the ratio of red to white grapes contributing to the sparkling wine\/champagne. Conventional wisdom has it that this ratio primarily determines the \u00a0unique taste of each product. The study showed that even the experts were completely unable to infer this ratio from blindly tasting the sparkling wine or champagne. Rather, their judgements seemed to be influenced by dose and alcohol content.<\/p>\n This small study (which should be repeated with larger numbers) is in line with earlier studies showing essentially the same thing. For example,\u00a0Morrot, Brochet, and Dubourdieu performed a study<\/a>\u00a0in which they colored white wine red, and then had 54 tasters describe the wine. They used red metaphors to describe the wine, as would typically be used to describe a red, rather than white, wine.<\/p>\n This demonstrates that what we see influences what we taste. There are many more examples of how one sense will influence another – essentially our brains integrate multiple sensory streams into one coherent narrative. What we experience is in no way objective, it is altered to make everything seem to fit together.<\/p>\n In another study<\/a>\u00a0researchers exposed wine tasters to positive and negative statements about the wine; they did this both before and after they tasted the wine, but before they reported their impression of the wine. The comments affected the tasters\u2019 evaluations of the wine when they occurred before, but not after, tasting the wine. This suggests that the tasters were not just following what they were told about the wine despite their experience, but rather that the positive and negative statements actually affected their experience of the taste of the wine.<\/p>\n