Assessing the impact of the tableware and other contextual variables on multisensory flavour perception

By Charles Spence, V. Harrar, Betina Piqueras-Fiszman. Flavour, 2012

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently little is known about how the non-edible items associated with eating and drinking (tableware items such as the plates, bowls, cutlery, glasses, bottles, condiment containers, etc.), or even environmental factors (such as the lighting and/or background music), affect people’s perception of foodstuffs. Here, we review the latest evidence demonstrating the importance of these contextual variables on the consumer’s behavioural and hedonic response to, and sensory perception of, a variety of food and drink items. These effects are explained by a combination of psychological factors (high level attributes, such as perceived quality, that may be mediating the effects under consideration), perceptual factors (such as the Ebbinghaus-Titchener size-contrast illusion and colour contrast in the case of the colour of the plateware affecting taste/flavour perception), and physiological-chemical factors (such as differences in the release of volatile organic compounds from differently-shaped wine glasses). Together, these factors help to explain the growing body of evidence demonstrating that both the tableware and the environment can have a profound effect on our perception of food and drink.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sensory Systems, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d58e92f6031c60884dcbe297f513dd0065068b9

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Sensory Systems

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Influence of the Color of the Cup on Consumers' Perception of a Hot Beverage (2012, background): “…for the fact that the color of the plate/bowl/cup can sometimes impact on taste/flavor perception have not been fully developed yet (see Spence et al. 2012), the present results will nevertheless hopefully stimulate not only sensory scientists, but also innovative chefs and…”
Scents and Sensibility: Olfaction, Sense-Making, and Meaning Attribution (2018, unknown): “…and the evaluation of food and drink appears much more reliant on surrounding consumption rituals (see, e.g., Almenberg and Dreber 2011; Beckert, Rös-sel, and Schenk 2017; Lehrer 2011; Richelieu and Korai 2014; Spence, Harrar, and Piqueras-Fiszman 2012; Torres Quintão and Zamith Brito 2015).”
The taste of cutlery: how the taste of food is affected by the weight, size, shape, and colour of the cutlery used to eat it (2013, background): “The results of the three experiments reported in the present study extend the findings of recent research that has demonstrated that the properties of the tableware can affect people’s perception of food samples [3].”
Plate shape and colour interact to influence taste and quality judgments (2013, background): “It has been suggested that an important goal of future research should be to examine the simultaneous interaction of two or more environmental variables [21].”
A taste of Kandinsky: assessing the influence of the artistic visual presentation of food on the dining experience (2014, background): “These include, amongst other things, the presence of other people [8], the atmosphere or the environment in which the food is consumed [9,10], the cutlery with which we happen to be eating [11,12], and the plateware from which we are eating [13-15].”