Abstract
Emotional state during food consumption is expected to affect food pleasantness. We hypothesize that a negative emotional state reduces food pleasantness and more so for novel foods than for familiar foods because novel foods have not yet been associated with previous emotions. Furthermore, we expect this effect to be stronger when judging the food again from memory without tasting. We induced a positive emotional state in 34 participants by telling them that they earned a monetary bonus and induced a negative emotional state in 35 other participants by subjecting them to a social stress test. After this emotion induction, both groups tasted and rated a (for them) novel soup (sumashi soup) and a familiar soup (vegetable soup). Several explicit and implicit measures of food pleasantness (rated valence, EsSense25, willingness-to-take-home and sip size) indicated that while the negative emotion group did not experience the soups as less pleasant than the positive emotion group, there was an interaction between food familiarity and emotional group. The positive emotion group experienced novel and familiar soups as equally pleasant, whereas the negative emotion group experienced the novel soup as relatively unpleasant and the familiar soup as pleasant. The latter result is consistent with a comforting effect of a familiar taste in a stressful situation. This effect remained in the ratings given 1 week later based on memory and even after retasting. Our results show that emotional state affects food pleasantness differently for novel and familiar foods and that such an effect can be robust.
Highlights
Food judgments depend on the quality of the taste and on the emotional state during food consumption, the social–emotional context in which the food is consumed, and already existing associations between food and emotion (Desmet and Schifferstein, 2008; Salvy et al, 2008)
Post-hoc tests indicated that the familiar soup was judged as more pleasant in the negative than in the positive emotional state and that the novel soup was judged as less pleasant in the negative than in the positive emotional state (Hypothesis 2)
For Day 1, we expected that overall experienced food pleasantness, as reflected in the valence ratings and the EsSense25, would be lower when tasting soups in a negative emotional state than in a positive emotional state and that this effect would be stronger for the novel soup than for the familiar soup
Summary
Food judgments (as probed by, e.g., ratings of food preference or liking, food pleasantness, food choice, and eating behavior) depend on the quality of the taste and on the emotional state during food consumption, the social–emotional context in which the food is consumed, and already existing associations between food and emotion (Desmet and Schifferstein, 2008; Salvy et al, 2008). The effect of ambiance on food intake and food choice was reviewed by Stroebele and De Castro (2004) They define ambiance as a context of environmental stimuli and conclude that there are major influences of ambiance on eating behavior. The studies that they reviewed showed effects of social–emotional aspects of context, as well as effects of physical aspects of contexts [e.g., colors (Spence et al, 2010; Chen et al, 2018), sounds (Spence and Shankar, 2010; Woods et al, 2011), and/or odors (Herz et al, 2004)]. We review studies that examine the effect of emotional state on food experience in some more detail
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
