Implicit and explicit measures of food emotions

Abstract

Abstract In food science, explicit measures such as liking scores have dominated studies in consumer and sensory research, but implicit measures such as heart rate and skin conductance are becoming more and more popular. We argue that implicit measures of food experience should not be regarded as a more expensive and more complex equivalent of established explicit measures. Instead, each type of measure provides complementary information. Whereas explicit measures capture especially the sensory aspects of the food itself, implicit measures capture especially the total food experience from pre-to post-consumption, which not only relates to the food itself but also to factors such as the physical and social context in which foods are consumed in real life. This requires that implicit measures are applied outside the conventional laboratory habitat. Fortunately, the rapid development of implicit measures makes their real-life application more and more possible.