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8:45 am
August 27, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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squeed.
You probably don't even know what you like
Abstract:
We set up a tasting venue at a local supermarket and invited passerby shoppers to sample two different varieties of jam and tea, and to decide which alternative in each pair they preferred the most. Immediately after the participants had made their choice, we asked them to again sample the chosen alternative, and to verbally explain why they chose the way they did. At this point we secretly switched the contents of the sample containers, so that the outcome of the choice became the opposite of what the participants intended. In total, no more than a third of the manipulated trials were detected. Even for remarkably different tastes like Cinnamon-Apple and bitter Grapefruit, or the smell of Mango and Pernod was no more than half of all trials detected, thus demonstrating considerable levels of choice blindness for the taste and smell of two different consumer goods.
I added comments asking about things similar to what I posted here (and in other places), and if I'm lucky someone will reply with more information for me.
I'm beginning to think I should just take some time to goof off looking for papers on this topic rather than the typical fiction reading I do.
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10:05 am
August 27, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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Something tells me that pw may have posted to the article linked from mefi, since I see a comment in wired from 'giantsquid'. or it might just be a coincidence.
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12:53 pm
August 27, 2010
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Hljothlegur
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sheila said:
Something tells me that pw may have posted to the article linked from mefi, since I see a comment in wired from 'giantsquid'. or it might just be a coincidence.
Could be more than one giantsquid, of course, although they do talk about PW a certain amount in mefi, so it makes sense that he'd cruise around over there.
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3:41 pm
August 27, 2010
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Hljothlegur
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You know, upon reflection, we cannot discount the pernicious influence of politeness and the pervasive smell-blindness that afflicts much of humanity in the whole tea-and-jam affair? I recently got two bottles of seltzer – one lime, the other "pomegranate." Same manufacturer. They smelled exactly the same, not somewhat the same, as if I closed my eyes I could picture what fruit they were going for, but out and out interchangeable. So I am less than sanguine about the purported differences between bitter grapefruit and cinnamon–apple tea.
Also, there is some kind of horrible aroma added to teas, candles, and some potpourri items that is supposed to be cinnamon apple or apple pie or Christmas or a whole cluster of smells and it just smells like whatever completely artificial chemical brew the smell industry thinks we're dumb enough and suggestible enough to breath and go, yeah, apple! It simply has never been near an apple.
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5:07 pm
August 27, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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I wonder how they control for the politeness factor too, though the wired article that is linked claims they do. (I saw a giantsquid comment on wired not mefi, btw).
I got offered what basically looked like a boston creme donut in a cafe I go to, and was told it had another name. I didn't say anything, just felt really puzzled and nodded and smiled.
When I hear about experiments that get done on people in store, I wonder how many people are thinking like I was without saying anything.
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5:40 pm
August 27, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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I was able to pull up the entire text of the paper thanks to mr google. with respect to discounting politeness as a factor:
Alternatively, it could perhaps be argued that the par- ticipants did notice the manipulation but for some reason refrained from telling us? We can address this issue both by looking at the explicit social and cultural context of the verbal reports, and the various implicit measures in- cluded in the study. Firstly, people are well acquainted with the context of product sampling and experiencing a second sample of the same goods as tasting or smelling somewhat different, so no social barriers should exist for reporting an experience of this type (consequently, we also see this reflected in the category of sensory-change reports in the study). Secondly, as we revealed the true nature of the experiment to the participants before we explicitly asked them whether they noticed the switch, the most sali- ent pressures of demand would work against the effect, and if anything, generating an over-reporting of the occur- rence of detections. More generally, in the current as well as in our previous studies (Johansson, Hall, Sikström, Tär- ning, & Lind, 2006; Johansson et al., 2005), participants of- ten express strong surprise, even disbelief at times, when being told the true nature of the experiments. We have no reason to believe this reaction is anything but genuine, and it is hard to reconcile with the idea of the participants just pretending that they did not notice the changes made.
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5:47 pm
August 27, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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Post edited 6:33 pm – August 27, 2010 by sheila
html-lized pdf of paper
Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea
(more papers at the co-author's page http://www.lucs.lu.se/petter.johansson/ )
…I like how in this tea & jam experiment that incentivizing the choice by allowing the people to take the jam home led to more choice blindness, not less.
also, they mention results of an upcoming paper,
We have recently shown that choice blindness can persist even for choices involving easily identifiable semantic attributes. In this study participants made hypothetical choices between two consumer goods based on lists of positive and negative attributes (e.g. for lap- tops: low price, short battery-life, etc.), and then we made extensive changes to these attributes which went unnoticed by the participants when they discussed their choice (Johansson et al., in preparation).
which changes the cost of the items, which is one variation I was hoping to see.
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9:09 am
September 22, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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What do I want? Don't ask me: Choice blindness at the market stall
The experiment got written up by BPS Research Digest. I reposted my questions there. I hope someone who works in the field replies.
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10:28 am
September 22, 2010
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sheila
| | mindsided by Blindsight | |
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Fingers crossed. I sent a brief email to one of the co-authors. I hope he replies.
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