Literature Review Of The Effects Of Taste On Consumers’ Decision Making
Introduction
There is limited research on both the effects of taste on consumer behaviour and on the concept of how “bitter” effects decision making and consumer’s behaviour and mood. While these concepts may seem niche, they do provide great insight into the effects sensory stimulation has on the decision-making process, as well as how to potentially manipulate consumer’s behaviours. In this area of limited research, it is my belief that it is of great importance to look at and study further the physiological responses induced from bitter flavour, and to investigate more thoroughly the areas of the brain that it simulates and what other environmental or emotional stimuli elicit similar neurological responses. I also think that examining the psychological aspects of the emotions evoked from bitter thoughts/memories may be able to provide greater insight into consumer behaviour. While there is little research currently on how taste effects behaviour, the field of sensory stimulation and the responses they elicit from human behaviour is becoming more popular as a field of study.
“The interactive effects of bitter flavor and mood on the decision to spend or save money” by Cai, Yang, Jr. , & Xu (2017) is the most critical piece of literature with regards to this research report as my report is a replication and review of some of the experiments that were described in the article.
The study centres around the concept of introducing stimuli to change people’s mood and therefore their perception, in this case the concept of bitter (both literally through taste and figuratively through emotional and verbal priming) is introduced. For this report it is important to look at the effect of “bitterness” both in its taste and in its verbal context. Taste’s influence on behaviour has been demonstrated in multiple article and studies.
In Batra’s “You are what you eat: An empirical investigation of the relationship between spicy food and aggressive cognition” it was shown how taste (in this case eating something spicy) affected behaviour (seemingly activating aggression as well as increasing perceived aggressive intent in others). We can see from Dubovskia’s “Bitter mouth-rinse affects emotions” that tasting of bitter compounds leads to decreased mood scores.
We see that unhappy/sad/“bitter” individuals are more decering decision makers than happy/positive individuals. It has also been shown that “happy” people and “sad people are influenced by their mood when making decisions.
Emotions and Behaviour
“The interactive effects of bitter flavor and mood on the decision to spend or save money” by Cai, Wyer, Yand, and Xu is centred around the concept that mood affects the way we process information, and that individuals feeling negative emotions are motivated to change these emotions through their behaviour. While happy individuals don’t have any motivating factors to change their current behaviour, unhappy people seek ways to change their behaviour to be happy. The study also centres around the concept of introducing stimuli to change people’s mood and therefore their perception In this case the concept of bitter (both literally through taste and figuratively through emotional and verbal priming) is introduced.
Research about people’s mood and how it affects the way they are processing information has been going on for a long time. This research has mainly been based around two general effects. Firstly, that individual’s mood influences the way a stimulus is perceived and therefore how they react. Notably stimuli are more favourably perceived by happy individuals than by sad individuals. Secondly, that mood can have a motivational influence on individuals. For instance, unhappy individuals are motivated to engage in behaviour that can help eliminate these emotions.
It has been observed however that affect and its informational and motivational influences are not independent of one another. Happy people’s responses to situations seem to be more independent of the context, and they therefore do not feel motivated to process information in a systematic manner. As unhappy individuals are experiencing negative feelings, these feelings are likely to lead to an individual’s current circumstance as being seen as problematic. They are therefore likely to use cognitive processing styles that will analyse the problematic circumstance and in turn determine an appropriate reaction. As stated by Schwarz (1991) individuals in a negative state may be motivated to avoid erroneous decisions in a situation that is characterized as problematic. People in positive affective states, on the other hand, see their current environment is a safe place and accordingly, these individuals may be more likely to take risks.
The above concepts and research lead us to think about what would happen if individuals were told to think about being in a contrasting emotional state to the one that they are in. For instance, if happy individuals had to think about the possibility of having a negative experience and they were to speculate about the likelihood of such a negative event occurring, it is likely that they would perceive the event as inconsistent with their current life situation and therefore consider such an event as more relevant to their future situation. Contrastingly unhappy individuals are likely to perceive a negative event as being consistent with their current situation, and therefore they may perceive a possible negative future event as being imminent.
These perceptions give light to the idea that an individual’s mood is likely to have an effect on their decision to save or spend money. If individuals contemplating the decision to save or spend money were faced with the idea that an unfortunate event might take place in their futures, it is likely that contemplating such an event would affect their saving or spending decision. By the reasoning above happy individuals find the concept of misfortune or adversity to be at odds with their current life situation, and therefore are likely to consider adversity as being a possibility in their future. Hence, in order to hedge against an unfavourable life situation, they will be more likely to save money. Whereas, unhappy individuals find the concept of misfortune or adversity to be consistent with their current life situation, and as such the idea of an unfortunate event will likely be seen as imminent. Therefore, unhappy individuals are more inclined to spend money so as to feel a sense of gratification so as to offset such an unfortunate circumstance. Such decisions however would only happen if these individuals were to think about the idea of misfortune around the time of their decision on whether to save or spend.
Taste and Behaviour
Taste is different from our other senses as it affects subcortical areas of the brain which are associated with reinforcement, emotion, and autonomic processes. Taste has been shown to have a definite effect on human behaviour. As stated by Herbert (2014), taste has long been considered to be closely related to emotions, as is evident in verbal and non-verbal expressions of metaphors, gestures, and facial expressions. Judgements tend to be harsher when an individual is physically experiencing a bad taste. Certain experiences can potentially leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth. Disgust stems from a food rejection impulse, that is typically displayed when tasting bitter substances. Social psychologists have found that bitter taste leads to the cognitive activation of survival-related concepts. The area of the brain that governs aversion is also activated by bitter taste. This evidence suggests that there is a link between a bitter taste and avoidance reactions. Evidence has also shown that bitter taste negatively affects mood Study provides converging evidence of the interactive effects of bitter taste and mood on the disposition to spend or save money. Findings from this study suggest that mood plays an important role in the effect of taste on consumers' savings decisions. The tasting of a bitter substance activates the concept of bitterness and all of its linguistic connotations (i. e. bitter being used to describe an unpleasant situation or person). Where individuals have not tasted something bitter and hence have not been cognitively reminded about the concept of bitter before they make a savings decision, they are less inclined to save money when they are happy than when they are sad.
Conclusion
Overall the literature reviewed has provided a solid foundation upon which to place our hypotheses. With conclusive evidence that emotions affect behaviour and decision making coming from and that taste does indeed affect behaviour. It is reasonable to conclude that hypotheses are well grounded and that a replication of some of the experiments contained within the article will both add to the research around the concept of how bitter flavour/mood affects spending/saving behaviours, and provide potential external validation to their findings/results.
