Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes to economic incentives. We calculated ratios of impact to cost for nudge interventions and for traditional policy tools, such as tax incentives and other financial inducements, and we found that nudge interventions often compare favorably with traditional interventions. We conclude that nudging is a valuable approach that should be used more often in conjunction with traditional policies, but more calculations are needed to determine the relative effectiveness of nudging.

In this paper, we review the empirical literature concerning the important question of whether or not food color influences taste and flavor perception in humans. Although a superficial reading of the literature on this topic would appear to give a somewhat mixed answer, we argue that this is, at least in part, due to the fact that many researchers have failed to distinguish between two qualitatively distinct research questions. The first concerns the role that food coloring plays in the perception of the intensity of a particular flavor (e.g., strawberry, banana, etc.) or taste attribute (e.g., sweetness, saltiness, etc.). The second concerns the role that food coloring plays in the perception of flavor identity. The empirical evidence regarding the first question is currently rather ambiguous. While some researchers have reported a significant crossmodal effect of changing the intensity of a food or drink's coloring on people's judgments of taste or flavor intensity, many others have failed to demonstrate any such effect. By contrast, the research findings concerning the second question clearly support the view that people's judgments of flavor identity are often affected by the changing of a food or drink's color (be it appropriate, inappropriate, or absent). We discuss the possible mechanisms underlying these crossmodal effects and suggest some of the key directions for future research in order to move our understanding in this area forward.

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In response, governments are increasingly interested in using behavioral insights as a supplement to or replacement for traditional economic levers, such as incentives, to shape the behavior of citizens and government personnel to promote public priorities. A number of governments around the world have formed nudge units: teams of behavioral science experts tasked with designing behavioral interventions that have the potential to encourage desirable behavior without restricting choice, testing those interventions rapidly and inexpensively, and then widely implementing the strategies that prove most effective. The United Kingdom established a nudge unit in 2010 and was soon followed by other countries, including Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, and Singapore, as well as the United States, where an Executive Order issued in September 2015 directed federal agencies to incorporate behavioral science into their programs (Obama, 2015). Of course, it is important to emphasize that behaviorally informed approaches can also be, and often have been, implemented by agencies without the use of designated nudge units. A key feature of behavioral strategies is that they aim to change "people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, [an] intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates"

Previous research that has manipulated either the color of, or labeling information associated with, foods and beverages has shown that each of these factors can significantly influence perceptual and preferential responses to them. The present study examined how the simultaneous manipulation of these two cues (color and label) affects perception of, and hedonic responses to, flavor. Thirty participants rated 12 chocolate M&Ms (identical aside from their color), described as coming from a "new line of chocolate products," for the intensity of their chocolate flavors ("chocolatey-ness") and their hedonic qualities ("likeability"). In the color-only condition, sighted participants received two green and two brown M&Ms. In the label-only condition, blindfolded participants received two M&Ms that were labeled as being from a "milk chocolate category" and two M&Ms that were labeled as being from a "dark chocolate category." In the color-label condition, sighted participants received an M&M of each of the four possible color-label combinations. The participants rated brown M&Ms as being significantly more chocolatey than green M&Ms and "dark chocolate"-labeled M&Ms as being significantly more chocolatey than "milk chocolate"-labeled ones. No such effects were observed for the likability data. There was no interaction between the color and label factors. These results illustrate that flavor perception involves the combining of chemosensory information with both visual (color) information and cognitive, expectancybased (label) inputs.

Does what we hear influence our perception of, and behaviors toward, food and drink? If so, what are the mechanism(s) underlying these cross‐modal effects? While many people intuitively believe that our sense of hearing has little influence on our experiences of foodstuffs, the evidence that has been published to date suggests that this is not always the case. In this article, we review the growing body of empirical research demonstrating that what we hear can affect our perception of, and responses to, food and drink. We review both laboratory‐based research and real‐world (ecological) studies of the effects of music and other auditory stimuli on people's food‐related behaviors. This research has revealed that what we hear (be it music, the sounds we make while eating, or even pure tones or bursts of white noise) can have a dramatic effect on our perceptions of food and drink. Auditory stimuli influence people's consumption rates, their preference ratings and their flavor assessments, and have even been shown to significantly impact on the overall amount that people consume. We highlight a number of explanations, including multisensory integration, attention, associative learning and expectations, that have all been put forward in order to account for these cross‐modal effects. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS This manuscript examines the relationship between what people hear and their food and drink experiences, perceptions and behaviors. In previous research, auditory cues have been shown to influence people's purchasing decisions, flavor evaluations and their consumption rates of food and drink. The multisensory approach inherent to this line of research provides a means of enhancing culinary experiences for people in the years to come. In fact, some important practical interventions have already been made. For example, the Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, England serves a “sounds of the sea” seafood dish. Those who select this dish are presented with a plate of seafood that is reminiscent of a beach, with an iPod (hidden in a seashell with the earphones poking out) that plays a “sounds of the sea” soundtrack. Innovations such as these, based on a solid understanding of the cognitive psychology and neuroscience of multisensory integration, may increasingly help to heighten our enjoyment and experience of food and drink.

Neural activity in the striatum has consistently been shown to scale with the value of anticipated rewards. As a result, it is common across a number of neuroscientific subdiscliplines to associate activation in the striatum with anticipation of a rewarding outcome or a positive emotional state. However, most studies have failed to dissociate expected value from the motivation associated with seeking a reward. Although motivation generally scales positively with increases in potential reward, there are circumstances in which this linkage does not apply. The current study dissociates value-related activation from that induced by motivation alone by employing a task in which motivation increased as anticipated reward decreased. This design reverses the typical relationship between motivation and reward, allowing us to differentially investigate fMRI BOLD responses that scale with each. We report that activity scaled differently with value and motivation across the striatum. Specifically, responses in the caudate and putamen increased with motivation, whereas nucleus accumbens activity increased with expected reward. Consistent with this, self-report ratings indicated a positive association between caudate and putamen activity and arousal, whereas activity in the nucleus accumbens was more associated with liking. We conclude that there exist regional limits on inferring reward expectation from striatal activation.

As we interact with the world around us, we are continually met by a number of distinct and salient smells: the waft of buttered popcorn that strikes us when we first enter the movie theater, the unpleasant smell of milk that has soured after being left out a bit too long, and the cup of freshly roasted coffee that sits at our desk, helping to keep us attentive during the day. Our sense of smell is undoubtedly advantageous from an evolutionary point of view. Being able to perceive and recognize the odors in our environment can provide useful information: Smells can help us to avoid a provide useful information: Smells can help us to avoid a burning building to our right, to consume a nutritious piece of fruit over a rotten one, and to help us select a fitting mate (see Candolin, 2003;Desor & Beauchamp, 1974;Rabin & Cain, 1984;Stevenson, 2009;Vlahos, 2006). y Interestingly, though, our ability to correctly identify substances just on the basis of orthonasal olfactory cues is actually quite poor. When odor cues are presented in isolation (i.e., divorced from any context), we are able f to correctly identify only roughly one third to one half of them (see Cain, 1979;Engen & Ross, 1973; Rabin & of them (see Cain, 1979;Engen & Ross, 1973 CHARLES SPENCE University of Oxford, Oxford, EnglandIn the present study, we explored the conditions under which color-generated expectations influence participants' identification of flavored drinks. Four experiments were conducted in which the degree of discrepancy between the expected identity of a flavor (derived from the color of a drink) and the actual identity of the flavor (derived from orthonasal olfactory cues) was examined. Using a novel experimental approach that controlled for individual differences in color-flavor associations, we first measured the flavor expectations held by each individual and only then examined whether the same individual's identification responses were influenced by his or her own expectations. Under conditions of low discrepancy, the perceived disparity between the expected and the actual flavor identities was small. When a particular color-identified by participants as one that generated a strong flavor expectation-was added to these drinks (as compared with when no such color was added), a significantly greater proportion of identification responses were consistent with this expectation. This held true even when participants were explicitly told that color would be an uninformative cue and were given as much time as desired to complete the task. By contrast, under conditions of high discrepancy, adding the same colors to the drinks no longer had the same effect on participants' identification responses. Critically, there was a significant difference in the proportion of responses that were consistent with participants' color-based expectations in conditions of low as compared with high discrepancy, indicating that the degree of discrepancy between an individual's actual and expected experience can significantly affect the extent to which color...