Flavor as a psychological construct

Taste has been long considered as one of the five basic and distinct senses. It has been thought of as going hand- in- hand with flavor, which was seen as the objective property of the material or food. More extensive research through has revealed that neither taste is a unified sense, not flavor is an objective property, merely linked with taste only (Prescott, 1999). In fact, it has been argued that is is difficult to have a ‘taste only’ experience: taste can be easily altered, even the closing of our nostrils can deprive us shortly from experiencing taste- thus flavor is the quality we could focus on (Smith, 2012). Defining flavor is a challenging task, but flavor can be understood as a psychological construct, because it is a multi- sensory modality, that can be altered by exogenous factors, it can be ‘manipulated’, and can be different among individuals, thus is subjective.

Flavor is perceived as a unified experience, but it has been defined as ‘the experience of eating food as mediated through all the senses’ (Smith, 2012, 56). The experience does not only include taste, and the sensory information that is coming from the mouth (and taste bulbs). It includes also a large quantity of information from the olfactory root- smell is an important aspect of flavor- as mentioned, closing the nose shut can deprive us of tasting what is inside our mouths (Prescott, 1999). But flavor is linked with vision as well, fact which was already recognized since the 1^st century A.D. From an evolutionary perspective, the link of vision to flavor is important: vision allowed the detection of food (or drink) from the environment, and the exploration of the food, before this is placed in the mouth- thus within the body (Cheok, Michel, Okajima, Petit, Spence, 2016). The sensory information from touch or hearing can also add up to the experience of flavor. It is now clear to scientists that flavor is informed by many sensory modalities, all of which are integrated into one, unified experience.

Flavor is also informed by external cues of the environment: factors such as lighting conditions, or sounds (or even music) can alter the way a flavor is perceived (Prescott, 1999). For example the dry air inside a flying airplane deprives some foods of their flavors, which is why the same food can taste better when being on the ground, than in the air.

In this manner, it can be seen that flavor can be ‘manipulated’ in some ways. For example, the flavor a product is expected to have, as well as the actual experience of the product is influenced by the shape of the package it comes in, and from the shapes decorating this package. Round shapes have been experimentally linked with more sweet tastes, whereas angular shapes have been linked with sour or bitter tastes. Such experiments show that the perception of flavor is a psychological construct (Cheok, Petit, Spence, Velasco, Woods, 2016).

Overall, flavor is a subjective concept: many sensory modalities, combined with external cues, provide with a unified set of information, and can be ‘manipulated’ in some ways. All these combined lead to an experience that is highly subjective for the individual. To add up to that, mood can also have an impact on flavor, fact which strengthens its psychological qualities (Prescott, 1999).

All these evidence lead to the strong claim that flavor is a psychological construct: it is not linked with taste alone, but with all senses and sub- sensory modalities, it is not objective (since it depends on so many constantly changing factors), it can be manipulated (experimentally or in the field of marketing), and can be affected by mood. All these many information lead to a multidimensional perceptual load, which is unified through a psychological translation and integration.

Literature

Cheok, A., D., Michel, C., Petit, O., Okajima, K., Spence, C., (2016). Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation, Brain and Cognition, 110, 53-64

Cheok, A., D., Petit, O., Spence, C., Velasco, C., Woods, A., T., (2016). Crossmodal correspondences between taste and shape, and their implications for product packaging: A review, Food Quality and Preference, 52, 17-26

Prescott, J., (1999). Flavour as a psychological construct: Implications for perceiving and measuring the sensory qualities of food, Food Quality and Preference, 10, 349-256

Smith, B., (2012). Complexities of flavor, Nature, 486, 56