Explicit and Implicit Responses to Tasting Drinks Associated with Different Tasting Experiences.

Daisuke Kaneko,Alexander Toet,Maarten Hogervorst,Anne-Marie Brouwer,Victor Kallen,Jan B. F. van Erp

doi:10.3390/s19204397

Abstract

Probing food experience or liking through verbal ratings has its shortcomings. We compare explicit ratings to a range of (neuro)physiological and behavioral measures with respect to their performance in distinguishing drinks associated with different emotional experience. Seventy participants tasted and rated the valence and arousal of eight regular drinks and a “ground truth” high-arousal, low-valence vinegar solution. The discriminative power for distinguishing between the vinegar solution and the regular drinks was highest for sip size, followed by valence ratings, arousal ratings, heart rate, skin conductance level, facial expression of “disgust,” pupil diameter, and Electroencephalogram (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry. Within the regular drinks, a positive correlation was found between rated arousal and heart rate, and a negative correlation between rated arousal and Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Most physiological measures showed consistent temporal patterns over time following the announcement of the drink and taking a sip. This was consistent over all nine drinks, but the peaks were substantially higher for the vinegar solution than for the regular drinks, likely caused by emotion. Our results indicate that implicit variables have the potential to differentiate between drinks associated with different emotional experiences. In addition, this study gives us insight into the physiological temporal response patterns associated with taking a sip.

Highlights

Information about food-evoked emotions in addition to simple liking ratings have been argued to improve predictions regarding consumers’ food choices [1,2,3,4,5]
The valence and arousal ratings of the vinegar solution were on average the lowest and the highest of all drinks tested, respectively. These results are in accordance with our assumption that the vinegar solution could serve as the ground truth unpleasant and arousing drink
The present study evaluated nine different measures of emotional food experience: explicit measures, implicit behavioral measures, implicit physiological measures (SCL, Inter-beat interval (IBI), Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and PD), and an implicit neurophysiological measure (FAA)

Summary

Introduction

Information about food-evoked emotions in addition to simple liking ratings have been argued to improve predictions regarding consumers’ food choices [1,2,3,4,5]. Researchers have developed and used emotion-association questionnaires, in which individuals indicate to what extent they experience certain emotions after tasting foods and/or beverages [6,7,8]. Such explicit self-reporting measures are relatively easy and cost-effective to apply. Several authors propose to measure unconscious (implicit) responses in addition to self-reports in order to better understand consumers’ food-evoked emotions and predict

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Conclusion