Behavioural Economics: Bittersweet Symphony - The Psychology of Food

Last night I attended a discussion with Professor Charles Spence, Head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University. He was speaking about the psychology of food, and his work with Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck.

It was a tremendously entertaining and revealing talk about the ways in which top chefs are embracing ideas from psychology and neuroscience in creating new products and experiences.

But how many of the innovations will find their way into the everyday meals that we eat rather than the ‘once in a lifetime’ conspicuous consumption of a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant? Constant trial and error from Chefs in charge of their own destiny is a world away from the financial imperatives and constraints of the mass-volume industrial food processing businesses.

‘Cooking is probably the most multi-sensual art. I try to stimulate all the senses.’ (Ferran Adrià, El Bulli restaurant, Spain)

Professor Spence explored how our perception is determined by how the brain works - this is increasingly important for all kinds of businesses and many leading advertising / marketing agencies are drawing on this when designing campaigns. The partnerships between research labs and businesses in this domain is a good example of external economies of scale in action!

Brains code colour and visual illusions can create all kinds of fun in terms of product perception.

How do the senses talk to one another? How do they connect? - Can we design and bring to market better products and stronger experiences? In the labs, increasing use is made of brain scanners measuring blood flow - each sense projects a little part of the brain. Spence argued that there were three important principles at work when using neuroscience in the food and drink industry:

1. Super-additivity - brains take a group of feint cues and often times combine them into something powerful (Try this chewing gum example. Take a piece of chewing gum and pop it into the mouth. the mint aroma is the first hit but this flavour soon dissipates. Next take your chewing gum out of the mouth and roll it into icing sugar, the result is that the mint taste usually returns in the mouth.

2. Multi-sensory suppression - Many marketing flops have failed to understand the impact of multi sensory experiences. The example quoted was the Clear Tab Cola launched to devastatingly poor effect in 1993, a clear drink that tasted of Coke didn’t work and the product was soon ditched.

3. Sensory dominance: To illustrate this we tried the McGurk Effect on speech perception - discovered by accident during the 1970s - it cannot be over-rided. Try it for yourself using the clip below

* Colour is a large part of what people perceive a product is - visual dominance over flavour!

* The sound of food also has a serious purpose - Professor Spence is famous for his work on the sonic crisp! Changing the sound of food changes its texture in the mouth - have a think about crisps, carrots, biscuits, breakfast cereals and dipping sauces. Noisy packets set up an expectation - the world’s noisiest crisp is said to be the Sun Crisp manufactured by Fritto Lay - try eating a crisp (or potato chip) without making a noise!

* Sensory dominance can lead to strong Pavlovian conditioning - we start salivating in the expectation of the food one is about to eat

* The environment of food also makes a big difference - wine and food rarely tastes as good at home as it does on holiday. Many leading restaurants are experimenting with different atmospheric cues that the brain takes in both before and during the dining experience.

As an economist, the effect of price on consumer perception is also deeply interesting and Professor Spence confirmed some of the recent findings of the impact of consumers having information on price pre and post consumption on their enjoyment of a meal.

Dan Ariely among others has done interesting work on this including the perception of price and quality when looking at the power of the placebo effect in medicine.

All in all, this was a mouth-watering talk that will give future visits to my own favourite restaurants a different flavour and texture in future.

For more reading:

Charles Spence research summary

Making better decisions better

Music to enhance the taste of the sea