An overture to overeating: The cross-modal effects of acoustic pitch on food preferences and serving behavior

Lowe, Michael; Ringler, Christine; Haws, Kelly L.

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2017.12.013

Cited by 25 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(see Spence & Wang, 2015d, for a review of those who have taken such a position). Actually, it is here that the effort to reduce sugar intake via sound, and/or colour, by let's say using "smart" technologically-enhanced cups (reported by Blecken, 2017), not to mention the latest pitch-overeating effects that have been demonstrated by Lowe, Ringler, and Haws (2018), becomes so relevant. The latter researchers just reported a study that capitalized on pitch/size crossmodal associations in order to evaluate whether sounds of different pitches would lead to different serving sizes.…”

Section: Multisensory Experience Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a case in point, consider only the school lunch cafeteria or work canteen, where strategically playing the right sort of background music, or soundscape (whatever that might be) might encourage consumers to choose more vegetables or sustainably-sourced protein (here one need only think of Zellner et al's, 2017, study with Spanish vs. Italian meals served in the student cafeteria). Sonic seasoning might also play a role at the condiment station, where a sweet background track might just induce people to add less sugar to their coffee (see Blecken, 2017;Lowe et al, 2018). That said, long-term follow-up studies are urgently needed in order to ascertain whether these sonic influences longer-term effects that persist beyond the span of an individual laboratory experiment.…”

Section: Implications For Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to Food Perception & Consumer Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Review

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food product-extrinsic sounds (i.e., those auditory stimuli that are not linked directly to a food or beverage product, or its packaging) have been shown to exert a significant influence over various aspects of food perception and consumer behaviour, often operating outside of conscious awareness. In this review, we summarise the latest evidence concerning the various ways in which what we hear can influence what we taste. According to one line of empirical research, background noise interferes with tasting, due to attentional distraction. A separate body of marketing-relevant research demonstrates that music can be used to bias consumers’ food perception, judgments, and purchasing/consumption behaviour in various ways. Some of these effects appear to be driven by the arousal elicited by loud music as well as the entrainment of people’s behaviour to the musical beat. However, semantic priming effects linked to the type and style of music are also relevant. Another route by which music influences food perception comes from the observation that our liking/preference for the music that we happen to be listening to carries over to influence our hedonic judgments of what we are tasting. A final route by which hearing influences tasting relates to the emerging field of ‘sonic seasoning’. A developing body of research now demonstrates that people often rate tasting experiences differently when listening to soundtracks that have been designed to be (or are chosen because they are) congruent with specific flavour experiences (e.g., when compared to when listening to other soundtracks, or else when tasting in silence). Taken together, such results lead to the growing realization that the crossmodal influences of music and noise on food perception and consumer behaviour may have some important if, as yet, unrecognized implications for public health.

show abstract

Section: Multisensory Experience Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to Food Perception & Consumer Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Review

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, a recent investigation by Lowe et al () about the effect of sound frequency on size perception discovered an intriguing pattern. That is, the sound needs to be somewhat related to the product beforehand to trigger the size perception bias.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Lowe et al () found that sound frequency influenced the actual serving sizes through size perception in a dynamic, self‐serve retail context, with larger serving sizes resulted under low frequency sound, suggesting the mediating role of perceived size between sound frequency and consumer behavior, because low frequency sound would make consumers, especially those who are hungry, to perceive the food in front of them are of larger size, and in turn, make the food appear more desirable (Lowe, Ringler, & Haws, ). Relatedly, when consumers’ product usage goal calls for big (vs. small) size, highly (vs. lowly) saturated products would look more appealing, and hence are more likely to be purchased.…”

Section: Hypotheses and Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cross‐modal interaction between sound frequency and color saturation on consumer's product size perception, preference, and purchase

Wang

Qian

2019

Psychology and Marketing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Extant literature has documented the direct effects of both sound frequency and color saturation on the perceived size of products. However, the cross-modal interaction effect of the two on size perception is yet unknown. Through three studies, this paper proposes that the effect of sound frequency on the perceived size of product is moderated by that product's own color saturation, and this further had downstream effects on consumers' product preference and purchase when they possess predetermined product usage goals toward bigger/smaller sizes. Study 1 found behavioral evidence that only when the color of the product is in high saturation can the sound frequency significantly influence the perceived size of the product, with low (vs. high) frequency leading to larger (vs. smaller) perceived size.When the product's color is in low saturation, the effect of sound frequency on perceived size disappears. Study 2 adopted the event-related potential technique and found that high (vs. low) saturation elicited higher arousal (mirrored by P300 amplitudes). Sound frequency is first moderated by color saturation and was then mediated by arousal to affect the perceived product size. The above results were also replicated in the field (Study 3). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.arousal, color saturation, consumer decision-making, cross-modal interaction, event-related potential, perceived size, sound frequency

show abstract

“…Meanwhile, at the high-end of multisensory coffee experience design, top baristas such as Rasmus Helgebostad and Matt Winton made a sonically enhanced coffee drink a few years ago as part of their barista championships routines (see Figure 2). Elsewhere, in more of a marketing-led intervention the Xin café in Beijing used augmented glassware to play sweet music and so reduce the sugar content in the drinks they served ( [156] see also [157]. However, the much more widespread exposure to flavour-music pairing has emerged through branded experiential events and sensory apps [158][159][160][161][162].…”

Section: Pairing Of Music and Food/beverage Stimuli: A Practical Persmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multisensory Flavour Perception: Blending, Mixing, Fusion, and Pairing within and between the Senses

Spence

2020

Foods

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This review summarizes the various outcomes that may occur when two or more elements are paired in the context of flavour perception. In the first part, I review the literature concerning what happens when flavours, ingredients, and/or culinary techniques are deliberately combined in a dish, drink, or food product. Sometimes the result is fusion but, if one is not careful, the result can equally well be confusion instead. In fact, blending, mixing, fusion, and flavour pairing all provide relevant examples of how the elements in a carefully-crafted multi-element tasting experience may be combined. While the aim is sometimes to obscure the relative contributions of the various elements to the mix (as in the case of blending), at other times, consumers/tasters are explicitly encouraged to contemplate/perceive the nature of the relationship between the contributing elements instead (e.g., as in the case of flavour pairing). There has been a noticeable surge in both popular and commercial interest in fusion foods and flavour pairing in recent years, and various of the ‘rules’ that have been put forward to help explain the successful combination of the elements in such food and/or beverage experiences are discussed. In the second part of the review, I examine the pairing of flavour stimuli with music/soundscapes, in the emerging field of ‘sonic seasoning’. I suggest that the various perceptual pairing principles/outcomes identified when flavours are paired deliberately can also be meaningfully extended to provide a coherent framework when it comes to categorizing the ways in which what we hear can influence our flavour experiences, both in terms of the sensory-discriminative and hedonic response.

show abstract

An overture to overeating: The cross-modal effects of acoustic pitch on food preferences and serving behavior

Cited by 25 publications

References 43 publications

Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to Food Perception & Consumer Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Review

Extrinsic Auditory Contributions to Food Perception & Consumer Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Review

The cross‐modal interaction between sound frequency and color saturation on consumer's product size perception, preference, and purchase

Multisensory Flavour Perception: Blending, Mixing, Fusion, and Pairing within and between the Senses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About