Invariant effect of vision on taste across two <scp>A</scp>sian cultures: <scp>I</scp>ndia and <scp>C</scp>hina

Abstract

Abstract Culture may influence sensory perception and behavior. Earlier we have shown that circular shapes and semantic familiar words enhance sweetness sensitivity with the Chinese volunteers. Do these effects also affect people from other cultural background? How does culture actually affect cross‐modal sensory perception? Here, we performed similar experiments with the Indian volunteers and compared the effects of vision on taste between the two groups. The results show that similar as the Chinese group, the circular shapes and semantic familiar words enhance sweetness sensitivities of the Indian volunteers as well, although their average sweetness threshold is higher than that of the Chinese group. Practical applications These invariant effects may be explained by the hypothesis that the role of culture is associated with the previous experience that breeds familiarity of the stimulus in the subjects. It might be due to a combination of higher degrees of the hedonics and familiarity of the visual stimulus (circular shapes and semantic familiar words), that manifest in the subjects of both cultures, as enhanced sweetness sensitivities. This work may lead to a better understanding of consumer behavior across cultures, and may have benefits in consumer research to design internationally competitive labelling or packaging of the food and gain advantage in the FMCG‐market. It can help to resolve the ongoing controversy centered around cultural influence on the cross‐modal sensory perception (vision‐taste) in neurosciences.