Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choice

Abstract

In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.

What reported food-evoked emotions may add: A model to predict consumer food choice

“…In various laboratory (Garcia-Bailo, Toguri, Eny, & El-Sohemy, 2009;Hasselbalch, Heitmann, Kyvik, & Sorensen, 2008) and real life studies (De Graaf et al, 2005), liking ratings have been shown to relate to food choice and food intake. In a recent study (Dalenberg et al, 2014) we demonstrated that food-evoked emotions better predict food choice than liking scores alone. However, combining emotion scores with liking ratings resulted in the best prediction of choice for tasted products without packaging information.…”

“…A detailed description of this approach can be found in Dalenberg et al (2014). In short, two Principal Component Analyses (PCAs) were performed on the emotion scores of all participant-product combinations for the blind taste choice context (B) and the package choice context (P), separately.…”

Model of acceptance of a new type of beverage: application to natural sparkling red wine

“…Siegrist (2008) established that psychological factors influence the acceptance of foods. Likewise Lockie et al (2004), , Dalenberg et al (2014), Barrena et al (2015) and Gutjar et al (2015) concluded that there is a considerable emotional dimension associated with the purchase and consumption of a new food. Nevertheless, found that emotional intensity is sometimes related to acceptance and sometimes differs, suggesting that food acceptance does not depend solely on emotions.…”

Older adults, mealtime-related emotions, and functionalities : tailoring protein-enriched meals

“…The current results can provide R&D guidance beyond the traditional liking and sensory characteristics (Dalenberg et al, 2014;. This guidance seems to be important with an eye on the increasing need for tailored and emotionally meaningful products for seniors (den Uijl, Jager, de Graaf, Waddell, & Kremer, 2014).…”

“…pleasure-displeasure) and arousal (i.e. sleepiness-activation) (Dalenberg et al, 2014;, whereas for seniors few food-related results have been reported. Although seniors tend to rely more on their emotions and heuristics during various psychological processes, Svärd, Fischer, and Lundqvist (2014) have shown that older persons tend to report emotions with a lower level of valence and emotional arousal than their younger counterparts.…”