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Why make the study with colored wine, when you could just blindfold the participants? It seems to me that would better distinguish whether visual aids are neces

Why make the study with colored wine, when you could just blindfold the participants? It seems to me that would better distinguish whether visual aids are necessary or just helpful.

dmurray 9y ago
That would be a different study, and it has certainly been done, but not with the same headline-grabbing results. It turns out even first year oenology students are actually pretty good at telling red wine from white when blindfolded. The real finding of the study is that the visual "aid" overpowers the evidence of taste and smell when it contradicts then.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  I remember hearing about a similar study about visual cues fooling the brain - there was a Japanese group who used augmented reality to change the size of a cookie when participants looked at it. Those who were shown the cookie enlarged, didn't eat the whole cookie, thinking it would be too much. Those who were shown the cookie in reduced size, tried to scoff it down in one bite haha. Although all the cookies were the same size, the visual perception of it had a major impact in how the test subjects reacted to it - even though they were all holding the same physical sized cookie. I don't have a journal article handy, but here's a news report about it: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/japan-diet-glasses-fool-wearers-into-eating-less/news-story/a82dc65e49dfa34794f268eb67caddd9 http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/japan-diet-glasses...
b1tr0t 9y ago
I believe the goal of the study was to explore how visual perceptions & expectations could influence the perception of taste. Have you ever been focused on an activity and had more than one beverage at hand, and picked up the wrong one? For example, while coding, I had a freshly opened cold coke and yesterday's room temperature coffee both in reach. Focused on my screen, I took the coffee when I intended to pick up my coke. The mismatch between expectation and reality was very unpleasant when it hit me, but what was interesting was there was some fraction of a second after I took the sip before my consciousness was aware (painfully, painfully aware) that what I was drinking was not a fresh, cold coke. Perception is interesting. What we see and what we expect are big influencers on what we perceive. I'm curious whether our other perceptions (touch, smell, hearing) can influence what our visual perception as strongly.

Why make the study with colored wine, when you could just blindfold the participants? It seems to me that would better distinguish whether visual aids are necessary or just helpful.

dmurray 9y ago

That would be a different study, and it has certainly been done, but not with the same headline-grabbing results. It turns out even first year oenology students are actually pretty good at telling red wine from white when blindfolded. The real finding of the study is that the visual "aid" overpowers the evidence of taste and smell when it contradicts then.

King-Aaron 9y ago
I remember hearing about a similar study about visual cues fooling the brain - there was a Japanese group who used augmented reality to change the size of a cookie when participants looked at it. Those who were shown the cookie enlarged, didn't eat the whole cookie, thinking it would be too much. Those who were shown the cookie in reduced size, tried to scoff it down in one bite haha. Although all the cookies were the same size, the visual perception of it had a major impact in how the test subjects reacted to it - even though they were all holding the same physical sized cookie. I don't have a journal article handy, but here's a news report about it: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/japan-diet-glasses-fool-wearers-into-eating-less/news-story/a82dc65e49dfa34794f268eb67caddd9 http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/japan-diet-glasses...

b1tr0t 9y ago

I believe the goal of the study was to explore how visual perceptions & expectations could influence the perception of taste. Have you ever been focused on an activity and had more than one beverage at hand, and picked up the wrong one? For example, while coding, I had a freshly opened cold coke and yesterday's room temperature coffee both in reach. Focused on my screen, I took the coffee when I intended to pick up my coke. The mismatch between expectation and reality was very unpleasant when it hit me, but what was interesting was there was some fraction of a second after I took the sip before my consciousness was aware (painfully, painfully aware) that what I was drinking was not a fresh, cold coke. Perception is interesting. What we see and what we expect are big influencers on what we perceive. I'm curious whether our other perceptions (touch, smell, hearing) can influence what our visual perception as strongly.