Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus

Brgy. Bitoon, Jaro, Iloilo City

How does colour conditioning

affect taste perception?

By:

18-Sofia Caram

6-Andre Haro

23-Christine Losañes

I. Introduction

Nowadays, most of the people around the globe enjoy eating. They find joy and freedom when they feed on

something. But the question is, how would the colour of food affect someone’s taste perception? We were tasked to

experiment on this specific topic and find out how important the colour of a certain food is. Before beginning any

experiment, all terms must be defined and understood well, especially by the ones going to conduct the experiment

in order to avoid even the slightest of mistakes. Based on the topic given to us, we had to study well the definitions

of the words “food”, “colour” and “perception”. A few of the characteristics of scientists is being open-minded,

patient and precise. At this point, we are considered as the scientists. We had to be patient in looking up the

definitions of these words even if they are already so common.

We had to be precise by looking up the definitions of the words one by one and after a long period of research, we

got our answer. We knew and completely understood that FOOD is a:

1. Material, usually of plant or animal origin that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, such as

carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to

produce energy, stimulate growth, and maintain life.

2. A specified kind of nourishment: breakfast food; plant food.

3. Nourishment eaten in solid form: food and drink.

4. Something that nourishes or sustains in a way suggestive of physical nourishment: food for thought; food

for the soul.

The first word is down and there are still two more words to go. Our second word was colour. After researching this

word, several meanings popped up and they all seemed to be important. The word COLOR means:

-That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in

terms of the observer or of the light, as:

a. The appearance of objects or light sources described in terms of the individual's perception of them,

involving hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light sources.

b. The characteristics of light by which the individual is made aware of objects or light sources through the

receptors of the eye, described in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, and purity.

-A substance, such as a dye, pigment, or paint that imparts a hue.

And the final word was up, the most important word in this experiment, PERCEPTION. A result of our research,

this was the best definition of perception that we could find:

In philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or

understanding of sensory information. The word "perception" comes from the Latin words perceptio, percipio,

which means "receiving, collecting, and the action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses."

Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative law in psychology is the Weber-Fechner

law, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects.

The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt school of psychology, with its emphasis on holistic approach.

What one perceives is a result of interplays between past experiences, including one’s culture, and the interpretation

of the perceived. If the percept does not have support in any of these perceptual bases it is unlikely to rise above

perceptual threshold.

According to this definition, when we speak of perception, the mind is usually included. This means that the colour

of food may affect someone’s taste perception because of what that person thinks about it, which means, it is all in

the mind.

Because of this, we are also forced to learn about the mental abilities of a person. The mind does control the rest of a

person's body which means that it also affects taste perception. There are standard flavours for different colours but

it can be changed.

For example, in the grocery, what would a person prefer to buy? Green pechay or brown pechay? These are the

questions we want to answer and we will do our best to do so, for the sake of science.

II. Purpose

Before people do something new to them, they are usually asked what the purpose of this thing is. Our experiment’s

purpose is simple but also very useful. Most especially for those people who cook and want people to enjoy what

they make. After this experiment, we are hoping to find out what colour most people prefer their food to be and also

why they do not prefer or enjoy the other colours.

We are also hoping to find out how their mind affects the food they want. Our experiment will let people know what

colour is best for their food so that more people would enjoy a certain meal.

We did not do this experiment just for the sake of our grades but also for fun, learning and science. This experiment

is not complicated but it requires a lot of effort. As a summary of everything and to cut things short, we are doing

this experiment to learn and find out for ourselves the answers to our questions and share it to the world.

We want to unleash the knowledge that is snuggling within our minds and it can no longer occupy any space. We

want to show the world that age won’t hold us back and hinder us from becoming true scientist, explorers and

discoverers.

Our time is running out and we no longer have any shells to hide ourselves in and therefore, we have no other choice

but to prove to the people that we children truly are the hope of the fatherland and that there is a bright future

awaiting the next generation and we wont let a successful future pass without us getting involved and being a art of

it all.

Our time to speak up is now because we are going to prove to the world that a single experiment like ours and even

the tiniest of discoveries can flip the whole world upside down.

III. Hypothesis

We hypothesized that if teenagers were presented with food that has color that corresponds to its flavor, then they

could easily identify the taste of the food rather than food with no color or has color but does not correspond ti the

flavor.

 We based our hypothesis in an experiment conducted by Emma B. which researched about the topic of color

conditioning and taste perception.

IV. Experiment Design:

The constants of this study were:

The amount of yogurt given to each teenager

The brand or kind of yogurt each teenager got to taste

The age group of the people who tasted the yogurt

The manipulated variable was the different color in each flavor of yogurt.

The responding variable was the amount of time it took for each teenager to identify the flavor of the yogurt and

the correctness of their guesses.

To measure the responding variable, we timed each teenager with a stopwatch to see how long it takes for each

teenager to identify the flavor and we took note of the teenager’s guesses.

V. Materials:

1. 16 cups of 125g Nestle Yogurt (plain/white-colored), flavored :

strawberry, mango, orange, grape(4 cups per flavor)

2. 1 pack of McCormick Food Coloring (4 colors: yellow, blue, red, green) 15 ml each bottle

3. 18 teaspoons

4. 28 clear plastic cups

5. Stopwatch

6. 10 teenagers ( all in healthy conditions)

7. 3 liters of drinking water

VI. Procedure:

A. Set up the Experiment

1. Place all materials on one location, like table.

2. Get 8 plastic cups and place them on the table separately.

3. Pour 2 cups of the 125g Nestle yogurt in each plastic cup and make sure the same flavor goes in each cup.

4. Label them according to their flavors.

5. Pour 4 drops of red food coloring to the first cup with the strawberry flavored yogurt.

6. Mix.

7. Pour 2 drops of red and 2 drops of blue food coloring to the first cup with the grape flavored yogurt.

8. Mix.

9. Pour 4 drops of yellow food coloring to the first cup with the mango flavored yogurt.

10. Mix.

11. Pour 2 drops of red and 2 drops of yellow food coloring to the first cup with the orange flavored yogurt.

12. Mix.

13. Check if you have one cup of red, strawberry flavored yogurt, and one cup of white, strawberry flavored

yogurt. Check if you have one cup of purple, grape flavored yogurt, and one cup of white, grape flavored yogurt.

Check if you have one cup of yellow, mango flavored yogurt, and one cup of white, mango flavored yogurt. Check

if you have one cup of orange (color), orange flavored yogurt, and one cup of white, orange flavored yogurt.

14. Update your labels with the change.

15. Make sure the labels are not facing the teenagers when you start to serve them.

B. Conduct the Experiment

1. Give each teenager an empty plastic cup, a plastic cup filled with water, and a teaspoon.

2. Explain to them that they would have to identify the flavor of yogurt that they would have to taste.

3. Let one teenager taste each of the cups of yogurt. Make sure he/she rinses before tasting another cup of

yogurt and that he/she receives the same amount of yogurt the other teenagers will be receiving.

4. Repeat no. 3 above for all the other teenagers.

C. Recording Data

1. Time his/her time in guessing the flavor of the yogurt. Record the data and identify if his/her guess was

correct.

VII. Results

The purpose of the experiment was to test whether color conditioning does affect taste perception. Our hypothesis

was that if teenagers were presented with food that has color that corresponds to the flavor, then the teenagers will

easily recognize the taste more accurately compared to food with no color or has color but does not correspond to

the flavor of the food. The results showed that the hypothesis should be accepted due to the fact that teenagers did

recognize the food easily and more accurately compared to food with no color. The results are shown on the

bottom.

Time It Took Teenagers to Recognize the Flavor of Yogurt

The results showed that teenagers could easily identify the flavor of yogurt with color that corresponds to the taste

rather than yogurt that has no color. The other results are shown representing how many teenagers accurately

recognized the flavors.

Number of Teenagers who accurately recognized the Flavor

The results above showed that teenagers are able to accurately recognize the flavor of the yogurt compared to

yogurt without color.

VIII. Conclusion/Discussion

As shown on the data we have collected, the results showed that the hypothesis should be accepted because of the

fact that teenagers were able to distinguish the different flavors of yogurt with color that corresponds to the flavor

with more accuracy and speed then those which has no color. This data shows that color conditioning does affect

taste perception. There are ways in which the mind works and behaves in certain conditions. These conditions are

identified below.

There are two types of conditioning that can affect one’s behavior. Operant conditioning is defined with a type of

training in which certain behaviors are reinforced or rewarded. It deals with the modification of Voluntary

behavior or operant behavior. Classical conditioning on the other hand deals with the conditioning of respondent

behaviors which are elicited by antecedent behavior. Behaviors conditioned via classical conditioning procedure

are not maintained by consequences. These conditions can affect our behavior and our decisions as well. Two

persons have experimented with the types of conditioning. They are Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner and Ivan

Petrovich Pavlov. A short article about each of them is shown below.

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner

Burrhus Frederic (1904-1990) studied and majored in literature at the Hamilton College in New York. He went

and lived in New York City in the late 1920's to become a writer. He was not very successful. "I had nothing

important to say," he later explained. So he decided to go back to school, and went to Harvard to study

psychology, since he had always enjoyed observing animal and human behavior. The psychology department was

immersed in introspective psychology, and Skinner found himself more and more a behaviorist. He worked in a

lab of an experimental biologist, and developed behavioral studies of rats. He loved to experiment with building,

and loved building contraptions as a kid. He put that skill to use by designing boxes to automatically reward

behavior, such as a depressing lever, pushing a button, and much more. His devices were such an improvement on

the existing equipment; they've come to be known as the Skinner boxes. He conducted many experiments using

conditioning.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia. He was educated in Russia and Germany. He became a

Russian physiologist. He won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his research on digestion. He showed

how the vagus nerve controls the flow of digestive juices of the stomach and pancreas. For the next thirty years,

Pavlov studied brain functions. He found that, by repeated association, an artificial stimulus could be substituted

for a natural stimulus to cause physiological reaction. This, as he called it, is a conditioned reflex. Pavlov believed

that all acquired habits, and even higher mental activity, depend on the chains of conditioned reflexes.

Colors also have effects in decision making. They can affect us psychologically that each color has been given

some meanings depending on which area or location the meaning was created. Color can affect the way we eat

such an example is blue which is said to represent the urge to eat while orange contradicts its meaning. Color does

in fact affect taste and is proven in a series of tests and experiments done.

Taste is a form of direct chemoreception and is one of the traditional 5 senses. This factor is an important factor in

our experiment conducted. It can somehow be recognized through the color of the food which can be very biased

and judgmental and can lead to error.

There are also two types of errors that can occur in the experiment. Type I error occurs when it is concluded that

the primary hypothesis is true while it is actually false. It occurs often then type II errors which occur when it is

concluded that the primary hypothesis is false while it is actually true. We tried to avoid errors as much as possible

in order to make the experiment accurate but there is no such thing as 100% accurate in science. Errors also occur

in the experiment. Some examples of error is that the color of food is sometimes mistaken for other flavors such

that yellow coloring can correspond to banana rather than mango and red can represent apples instead of

strawberries. Another source of error is bias and wrong judgment of the result which can happen often. Errors can

affect the results of the experiment and thus we can’t say that our experiment is 100% accurate.

In this discussion, the main goal was to explain how color conditioning can affect taste perception and what the

different factors that can affect taste perception are. Also, the discussion was to explain the behavior of the human

mind based on the types of conditioning. Lastly, this discussion was to identify the types of error and the sources

of error as well that can change the outcome of the experiment

Appendix:

The preparation for the experiment

One of the teenagers for the experiment

IX. Bibliography

theblufish.com/.../decorating/freelance/colorskitchen.html

Wikipedia.com

faculty.washington.edu/chudler/coltaste.html

www.colormatters.com/science_faq3.html

changingminds.org/explanations/.../conclusions/type_1_2.htm

Yahoo.com

Google.com