Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Although it is documented that vision can impact flavor perception, less known are the interrelations between subsets of cross-modal factors. Within the framework of cross-modal perception three between-group experiments were conducted to determine the impact of color and container type on the flavor perception. Two different containers and 10 colors were tested in two online experiments (n1 = 67, n2 = 63); in the third experiment two non-sweetened colored drinks were tested (n = 32). Hedonic, associative, and emotional measurements were applied. Our results indicate that color can increase the expected sense of flavor. For instance, red, pink, orange (average values 3.7, 3.7, 3.6 on a 5 pt scale) are the strongest examples of sweetness. For some colors (e.g., red and brown) predicted sweetness is also determined by the type of container (bottle vs. glass). Additionally, the sense of freshness as a cross-modal factor increases the likeability of the drink.