Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

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Food Quality and Preference

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodqual

The role of expectancy in sensory and hedonic evaluation: The case of

smoked salmon ice-cream
Martin R. Yeomans a,*, Lucy Chambers a, Heston Blumenthal b, Anthony Blake c
a

Department of Psychology, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
The Fat Duck Restaurant, Bray Oxford, UK
c
Firmenich Research, Geneva, Switzerland
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 15 August 2007
Received in revised form 7 February 2008
Accepted 24 February 2008
Available online 4 March 2008

Keywords:
Flavour
Hedonics
Expectancy

a b s t r a c t
Our experience of avour involves integration of multiple sensory inputs, and the hedonic evaluation of
this complex avour experience is important in determination of food choice. The appearance of food also
generates expectations about food avour, and past work suggests that these expectations if conrmed
enhance the avour experience. What is less clear is what happens when cues prior to ingestion predict
a avour which is in marked contrast to the actual avour characteristics. To test this, we conducted three
experiments where expectations about food avour were generated by plausible but inaccurate food
labels for a highly novel food, smoked-salmon ice-cream. In Experiment 1, the experience of the food
in the mouth generated strong dislike when labelled as ice-cream, but acceptance when labelled as frozen
savoury mousse. Labelling the food as ice-cream also resulted in stronger ratings of how salty and
savoury the food was than when labelled as a savoury food. Experiment 2 conrmed these ndings,
and also found that an uninformative label also resulted in acceptable liking ratings. Experiment 3 explicitly tested the effect of labels on avour expectation, and conrmed that the ice-cream label generated
strong expectations of a sweet, fruity avour, consistent with the visual appearance of the ice-cream,
but in marked contrast to the avour of salty sh. As in Experiments 1 and 2, liking was minimal when
the food was tasted after the ice-cream label condition, but liking was acceptable in the other label conditions. These data show that the contrast between expected and actual sensory qualities can result in a
strong negative affective response and enhancement of the unexpected sensory qualities.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Although the senses are anatomically separate, they rarely
operate independently since the majority of stimuli in the environment stimulate multiple senses. The increased recognition that our
sensory experience reects integration of these multiple sensory
inputs has been applied to many experiences, most notably in
the current context to our experience of food avour (e.g., Delwiche, 2004; Keast, Dalton, & Breslin, 2004; Small, Jones-Gotman, Zatorre, Petrides, & Evans, 1997). Although the experience of the
sensory qualities of a food are often described in terms of how it
tastes, in practice this experience of avour is a complex interaction between multiple sensory experiences. Arguably, multi-sensory integration may be at its most extreme in the case of
avour perception since few other experiences offer the opportunity for concomitant stimulation of all the major senses: gustation
through the ve primary tastes, olfaction through both ortho- and
retronasal stimulation of olfactory receptors by volatile com* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1273 678617; fax: +44 1273 678058.
E-mail address: martin@sussex.ac.uk (M.R. Yeomans).
0950-3293/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2008.02.009

pounds released from food, mechanoreception contributing to

our perception of texture and providing information on temperature, pain arising from oral irritants and hearing that results from
sounds and vibrations coming from the mouth contributing to
our perception of aspects of texture. The focus of the present paper
is on a further aspect of the multi-sensory experience of avour,
how expectations about food avour arising from visual and cognitive cues prior to ingestion modify our hedonic and sensory experience of the avour of food in the mouth.
The visual appearance of a food is well known to inuence avour recognition. Thus many studies have shown that the presence
of a congruent colour enhances the ability to identify food and
drink stimuli, relative to presentation of the same stimuli without
a colour cue or with an incongruent colour (Dubose, Cardello, &
Maller, 1980; Stillman, 1993; Teerling, 1992). Further evidence of
cross-modal associations within food-related stimuli involving visual cues comes from studies of interactions between visual and
olfactory stimuli. For example, when a white wine was coloured
red, the sensory descriptors applied to the odour of the wine were
consistently terms used normally for red rather than white wine
(Morrot, Brochet, & Dubourdieu, 2001). Thus, in the absence of

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appropriate visual cues, the actual olfactory quality of the wine had
little impact on the way in which the wine odour was described,
with instead the colour predominating. Likewise, explicit detection
of both food-related and non-food odours was enhanced when the
odour was presented alongside a congruent picture (e.g., ice-cream
picture presented with vanillin, see Gottfried, & Dolan, 2003), and
likewise speed and accuracy of odour detection was faster for congruent odour-colour pairings (e.g., strawberry odour and pink colour) than for incongruent pairings (Luisa Dematte, Sanabria, &
Spence, 2006). One explanation for these effects is that the visual
cue sets up an expectation of the avour to be experienced in the
mouth as a consequence of past associations between the visual
appearance and perceived avour of similar food stimuli. Indeed,
it has been argued that such associations are likely to be memorised without any explicit attention or learning (Koster, Prescott,
& Koster, 2004), highlighting further the key role of memory in
developing food-based expectancies (Mojet, & Koster, 2005).
An important methodology in examining the role of expectations in determining our experience of avour has been to manipulate the congruence between pre-ingestive visual and cognitive
cues and the actual sensory quality (taste and/or odour) once the
sample has been ingested, extrapolating the exploration of the effects of congruence in interactions between tastes and odours
(Frank, & Byram, 1988; Labbe, Damevin, Vaccher, Morgenegg, &
Martin, 2006). In most circumstances, visual cues will be a reliable
indicator of the actual avour quality of a food, both in terms of
overall recognition of the nature of the food and also whether
the food is in an appropriate state to be ingested. However, when
there is a lack of congruence between the expected and actual sensory quality of a food, this may lead to perceptual confusion and so
alter the sensory experience itself.
Alongside a clear literature on the extent to which visual
appearance may alter our ability to identify, and to some extent
modify the sensory quality of a food or drink, the extent to which
expectations about avour also modify our hedonic evaluation of a
food has also received attention (Cardello, 2007; Deliza, & Mace,
1996). Actual food choice often occurs based on written or verbal
description of a food, even before the actual food has been seen.
Thus, in restaurants our choice is based on expectations of liking
for avours implicit in descriptions of the potential foods on offer,
with the expectation that the description and actual sensory quality will be congruent. In relation to food avour, congruence has
been dened as the extent to which two stimuli are appropriate
for combination in a food product (Schifferstein, & Verlegh,
1996), and has been widely used to denote the impact of perceptual similarity between elements in food avour on changes in sensory quality. For example, perceptual similarity between an odour
and taste was a good predictor of taste intensity (Frank, Shaffer, &
Smith, 1991).
Expectations about the sensory quality of a stimulus can alter
liking and perception of that stimulus in two contrasting ways.
Firstly, the sensed and expected sensory qualities may combine,
so resulting in actual evaluations which are closer to the expected
evaluation than is seen when the same item is evaluated without
prior expectation. These outcome can be explained by assimilation
theory, rst proposed in relation to attitudinal change in social
psychology (Hovland, Harvey, & Sherif, 1957), where attitudes
are adjusted by prior expectation. In relation to perception of the
qualities of food stimuli, many studies have reported assimilation
effects, both in relation to affective (liking) evaluations and sensory
evaluations (Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992; Deliza, & Mace, 1996; Kahkonen, Tuorila, & Rita, 1996; Lange, Rousseau, & Issanchou, 1999;
Schifferstein, Kole, & Mojet, 1999; Tuorila, Cardello, & Lesher,
1994). For example, verbal descriptions which implied that a product (pomegranate juice) was very pleasant (e.g. the statement that
the product scored 8.1 on a 9 point liking scale) or very unpleasant

(e.g., that it scored 1.9 on a 9 point liking scale) generated expectations in line with these ratings (Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992). Accordingly, a positive expectation lead to a small increase in actual rated
liking on tasting the product (assimilation) although an expectation of a disliked avour had minimal effects on actual liking for
the tasted product. Effects on sensory qualities were clearer: being
told that a product had a bitter taste increased rated bitterness on
tasting, while expectations of low bitterness tended to decrease
bitterness evaluations. The authors concluded that the study provided evidence for the assimilation model: actual and expected
sensory experience combined to generate the overall avour experience and liking. In relation to evaluation of liking, recent research
conducted under semi-naturalistic conditions in a cafeteria supports the idea of assimilation. Thus, the use of evocative descriptive
menu names resulted in stronger positive evaluations of the food
after it had been consumed than when the same food had been labelled by nutritionally accurate but non-evocative names (Wansink, van Ittersum, & Painter, 2005). Likewise, labelling a tomato
soup with a name implying a higher quality (e.g., Gastronomes
Connoisseurs Choice Cream of Tomato relative to McTaggarts
Lean and Low Tomato) resulted in signicantly higher hedonic
ratings for the same soup regardless of actual nutrient content
(Yeomans, Lartamo, Procter, Lee, & Gray, 2001), and also resulted
in higher ratings of creaminess of the soup.
In the examples above, actual evaluations of foods generally
changed to be more in line with the expected quality even though
there was a discrepancy between the expected and actual qualities
of these stimuli. However, as discussed earlier, although most
studies of effects of expectations on evaluations of foods result in
assimilation, in some cases such discrepancies can lead to a decrease in the rated quality (contrast effect) rather than assimilation
For example, a strong expectation that an unusual breath freshener
(Jintan) had a pleasant taste (ie was a form of Japanese candy) resulted in markedly lower liking ratings than when Jintan was assessed without expectation (Zellner, Strickhouser, & Tornow,
2001).
A key question is then what determines whether information
about a product leads to an enhanced evaluation (assimilation)
or a decrease (contrast)? Recent reviews suggest a number of factors may be important (Cardello, 2007; Schifferstein, 2001). Firstly,
the size of the discrepancy: where the difference between actual
and expected qualities are small, the difference may not be noted,
and so assimilation takes place, whereas if the discrepancy is large,
contrast may occur. This effect is captured well by the affect expectation model (Wilson, Lisle, Kraft, & Wetzel, 1989). Where the discrepancy is not apparent, the expectation is no longer a point of
reference and so is not directly compared with the actual qualities.
In relation to food, several studies report ndings consistent with
this idea (see Cardello, 2007 for review). A second factor is the
strength of the expectation: even where there is a large discrepancy between expected and actual properties, assimilation may occur if the expectation is very strong. In relation to food, an
important test of these ideas was reported by Zellner et al.
(2001). Their participants evaluated two novel foods, Jintan and
guanabana nectar, with expectation about liking manipulated by
the information provided beforehand. Assimilation occurred where
expectation were based on specic information about the nature of
the food (e.g., where participants assessing Jintan were told that
other assessors had rated this as very disliked), even when the extent of the expected dislike was much greater than that seen when
the food was evaluated without prior expectations, but contrast
was seen where the expectation and actual experience were very
different. The ndings by Zellner and colleagues are important
since they contrast with a larger literature suggesting assimilation
is the normal response to disconrmed expectancies with food,
discussed earlier. One reason for this may be that most previous

M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

studies have concentrated on subtle differences in quality between

the expected and actual properties of foods, conditions which
would favour assimilation, whereas Zellner et al. (2001) explicitly
explored conditions where expectations could be disconrmed.
Thus in hedonic evaluations, both assimilation and contrast are
possible outcomes of prior expectations, depending on the
strength, plausibility and nature of the expectations.
The affect expectation model can be applied usefully to understanding of expectations of liking, but since it is grounded in affect,
it is less directly applicable to evaluations of sensory rather than
affective quality. Notably, Zellner et al. (2001) only measured hedonic evaluations, and the effect of large disconrmed expectancies
on sensory rather than hedonic evaluations remains under-studied.
In one early study, participants rated sucrose or quinine solutions
which were either labelled correctly or incorrectly (Carlsmith, &
Aronson, 1963). Disconrmed expectancies resulted in contrast effects: quinine was rated as more bitter when labelled as sucrose,
and vice versa. However, the authors interpreted these changes in
sweet and bitter dimensions as a reection of hedonic changes. Recent work, however, suggests that sweet and bitter ratings are dissociable from hedonic evaluations (e.g., Yeomans, Mobini, Elliman,
Walker, & Stevenson, 2006), which implies that the outcome of the
study by Carlsmith and Aronson (1963) may reect actual sensory
rather than hedonic changes. Other studies report assimilation of
labelled sensory quality into actual product evaluations (e.g., Caporale, Policastro, Carlucci, & Monteleone, 2006; e.g., Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992; Tuorila et al., 1994), but in the context of foods which had
qualities which were similar to expectations, and so may promote
assimilation since the difference between expected and actual qualities may not have been noticeable. Thus there is a need for further
studies exploring the role of expectation in sensory and hedonic
evaluations of foods where expectations are disconrmed, and this
difference is apparent to the consumer, and that was the aim of the
experiments reported here.
The aim of the three experiments described in this report was to
explore the importance of congruency between the expected avour (generated by a combination of a simple food label and visual
appearance) and actual sensory experience of a highly novel food
which had the capacity to generate extreme differences between
expectations and actual sensory qualities. To achieve this, we generated a highly novel food (smoked salmon ice-cream) whose visual appearance could be interpreted either as a fruit ice-cream
or savoury mousse. Critically, we wanted to determine the extent
to which hedonic and sensory evaluation of the food was inuenced by the congruence between the expected and actual avour.
Where the label predicted the actual sensory experience (i.e., a label of frozen savoury mousse), we predicted that the food would
be perceived as acceptable. However, where the expectation generated by the label predicted a sweet food (i.e. when the food was labelled as ice-cream), we predicted that liking would be
signicantly reduced when the actual food was experienced. Moreover the experience of unexpected sensory qualities (a savoury,
salty sh avour) might lead to over-estimation of the key sensory
attributes of the salmon ice-cream due to the strong contrast between expected and perceived avour.

567

2.1.3. Participants
The participants were an untrained panel of 32 assessors (24
women and 8 men) selected from staff and students at the University of Sussex who had previously shown an interest in studies
relating to ingestion. Potential volunteers were contacted through
email, and were informed that the study simply involved evaluation of a novel ice-cream. Volunteers who had diabetes, had any
known or suspected food allergy or had a prior diagnosis of an eating disorder were excluded, and the study was described as unsuitable for vegetarians. The participants were the rst 32 respondents
who met the study criteria. Participants were assigned at random
to either an informed ICE-CREAM or informed SAVOURY group,
while ensuring the same gender ratio (there were 16 participants,
12 women and 4 men, in each condition). The two groups did not
differ signicantly in age.

2.1.4. Test food

The food used in the test was a novel smoked-salmon icecream, based on an original idea by Heston Blumenthal and then
developed further by Firmenich SA in Geneva. The ice-cream was
unusual in that it was not sweet; it contained the following
ingredients:
 565 ml: full fat UHT milk obtained from a local supermarket.
 200 ml: UHT cream with a 35% fat content obtained from a local
supermarket.
 235 g: maltodextrin with a dextrose equivalent of 10 (Star-Dri
10 from Tate & Lyle plc).
 230 g: scottish smoked salmon obtained from a local
supermarket.
 8 g: sodium chloride.
 3 g: MSG (monosodium glutamate from Ajinomoto plc).
The cream, milk, maltodextrin, salt and MSG were thoroughly
mixed to be free of any lumps and passed through a kitchen sieve.
900 ml of this mix were placed in the stainless steel beaker from a
Pacojet Machine (Pacojet AG, Bundesstrae 7, CH-6300 Zug/Switzerland). A small aluminium bottle (5 cm diameter) was lled with
table salt and capped. This was placed in the centre of the Pacojet
beaker and was tall enough to protrude above the level of the liquid. The whole was covered and placed in a deep freezer overnight. The next day the salt was poured out of the aluminium
bottle and replaced with warm water; this allowed the bottle to
be easily removed from the frozen mix leaving a central vertical
hole from top to bottom. This hole was packed with the smoked
salmon and the whole container was stored in the deep freezer until needed.
The Pacojet machine is designed to forcibly grind and churn a
portion of a frozen mass into a nely divided pure. In this case
it thoroughly mixes the frozen cream mix with the salmon to a
homogeneous and smooth consistency; in this process ice crystals are reduced to a size that is compatible with a smooth
creamy ice-cream. The overall colour was pink/peach with no
visible sign of salmon pieces. For the sensory tasting sessions,
a single scoop of ice-cream (c. 30 g) was served in a small plastic
tray.

2. Experiment 1
2.1. Method
2.1.2. Design
The study used a between-subjects design to contrast hedonic
and sensory evaluations of a novel food (smoked-salmon icecream) depending on whether this was presented to assessors as
ice-cream or frozen savoury mousse.

2.1.5. Procedure
Participants attended for a single tasting session, which was
conducted between 1445 and 1600 h in small, air-conditioned
windowless cubicles in the Ingestive Behaviour Unit at Sussex
University, having been instructed to refrain from eating and to
drink only water for the two hours prior to testing. All data were
collected using Sussex Ingestion Pattern Monitor software (see

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M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

Yeomans, 2000) run on Apple G3 computers. Initially participants

completed a series of computerised mood and appetite ratings in
the form How hwordi do you feel?, where the adjectives rated
were: clear-headed, drowsy, thirsty, lively, calm, full, nervous, relaxed, hunger and nauseous. Ratings were made by positioning a
bar at the point of a horizontal line 500 pixels long which best reected how participants currently felt, and ratings were scored
automatically on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 500 (extremely).
The polarity of the scale varied at random, as did the order in
which ratings were made, and the adjective describing the dimension to be rated was positioned centrally above the rating scale.
The appetite and key mood ratings (anxious, nauseous and nervous) were used to test for spurious group differences which might
have confounded any differences in hedonic evaluations of the icecream, and the remaining mood evaluations were included both to
ensure familiarity with the computerised ratings, and to disguise
the purpose of the study. After completion of the nal mood rating,
the computer signalled the participant to call the experimenter,
who immediately served the ice-cream portion, along with fresh
mineral water for participants to use to cleanse their mouth after
tasting. The key manipulation in the study was the description of
the ice-cream on-screen at the time of evaluation. In the ICECREAM condition, the food was labelled as ice-cream, but in
the SAVOURY condition the description given to participants was
frozen savoury mousse. Evaluations of the ice-cream were all
made using the same style of ratings as with the mood and appetite scales. Participants made one hedonic rating (How pleasant
is the taste?), a rating of avour strength (strong) and seven
avour descriptors (fruity, savoury, sour, creamy, salty, bitter and
sweet). As with the mood/appetite ratings, the order in which
evaluations were made was randomised. Once these ratings had
been completed, the participant was debriefed, and rewarded
either with a small payment or course credits for research
participation.

2.1.6. Data analysis

Initial analyses were aimed at conrming that the betweengroups contrast of hedonic evaluation of the ice-cream was not
invalidated by spurious differences in appetite and mood at the
time of testing. Thus each mood and appetite rating was contrasted
between the ice-cream and savoury mousse conditions using
ANOVA, with gender of assessor as a controlled factor. The same
analysis was then used to assess the rated characteristics of the
ice-cream between the two groups.
2.2. Results
Assessors who were pre-informed that the food was a frozen
savoury mousse (condition SAVOURY) rated the avour of the
smoked salmon ice-cream as signicantly more pleasant than
did those who experienced the same food simply labelled as
ice-cream (F(1, 28) = 11.34, p < 0.005), with the latter condition
nding the avour extremely aversive, compared to a mild dislike in the savoury condition (Fig. 1a). Thus expectancy generated
by the physical appearance of the food combined with a simple
written descriptor had a large effect on rated avour pleasantness. In addition, ratings of saltiness were signicantly greater
in the ICE-CREAM than SAVOURY condition (F(1, 28) = 5.96,
p < 0.05: Fig. 1b), and the ICE-CREAM condition also perceived
the avour as stronger overall (F(1, 28) = 7.63, p < 0.01: Fig. 1c).
Ratings of bitterness were variable, but again assessors in the
ICE-CREAM condition tended to rate the avour as more bitter
than did those in the SAVOURY condition (F(1, 28) = 3.32,
p = 0.079: Fig. 1d). None of the other sensory ratings differed between conditions.
Evaluation of baseline ratings (Table 1) conrmed no spurious
differences in appetite (hunger, fullness or thirst) or mood (anxiety, nervous and nausea) that could account for differences in evaluation of ice-cream avour, and no analysis found any differences

Fig. 1. Rated pleasantness (A), saltiness (B), strength of avour (C) and bitterness (D) of smoked salmon ice-cream depending on whether this was labelled as frozen savoury
mousse or ice-cream. Data are mean SEM.

M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

Table 1
Baseline ratings of appetite and mood prior to avour evaluation in Experiment 1
Attribute rated

ICE-CREAM condition

SAVOURY condition

Full
Hunger
Thirst
Nauseous
Nervous

239.1 18.9
192.4 25.9
242.5 26.9
65.7 27.6
157.2. 28.3

231.7 27.1
203.5 30.7
234.3 26.5
65.5 24.5
152.9 29.4

between female and male assessors either in baseline mood and

appetite or in assessment of the ice-cream.
2.3. Conclusion
These data suggest that the sensory qualities implied by a simple food label affected the perceived pleasantness of avour of a
novel, and also modied actual perception of avour components.
More importantly, these data imply that inaccurate expectations
about food avour can lead to strongly aversive responses when
the food was tasted, in line with a limited existing literature also
showing hedonic contrast effects with food stimuli (Cardello, &
Sawyer, 1992; Zellner et al., 2001). These data thus consistent with
the idea that avour perception is an integration of sensory information with past memory of similar stimuli predicted by the visual
qualities, and accompanying written descriptor, of the rated food.
However, two methodological issues limit interpretation of Experiment 1. Firstly, the recruitment strategy identied the study as an
ice-cream tasting study during the recruitment of participants.
Consequently, the specic information that the product was a frozen savoury mousse may have had less impact than if participants
had not had the initial expectation of ice-cream. Secondly, while
Experiment 1 established large differences in evaluation of the
smoked salmon ice-cream depending on the associated label, it is
impossible to determine whether this resulted from the negative
impact of incongruous ice-cream label, or a positive effect of congruous frozen savoury mousse label. Experiment 2 was designed
to counter these limitations.
3. Experiment 2
3.1. Method
3.1.1. Design
A between-subjects design was again used to contrast hedonic
and sensory evaluations of a novel food (smoked salmon icecream) with the same two conditions (ice-cream or frozen
savoury mousse) as in Experiment 1, and a third control condition
which provided no descriptive information (Food 386).
3.1.2. Participants
The participants were 44 untrained assessors. The recruitment
was the same as in Experiment 1 except that the description of
the study in all communications prior to testing, and in the information sheet for participants, described the study as assessing a
novel food. Participants were assigned at random to the three conditions, with the original aim of using 15 participants in each conTable 2
Characteristics of the participants in Experiment 2
Condition

Age
BMI
Gender (F/M)

Control

Ice-cream

Savoury

21.3 1.0
22.7 0.6
12/3

21.4 0.7
22.1 0.6
11/3

21.1 0.5
22.6 0.5
11/4

569

dition. However, one participant failed to attend their test session,

and the nal composition of the three panels (Table 2) had 15 participants in the SAVOURY and CONTROL conditions, but 14 in the
ICE-CREAM condition.
3.1.3. Procedure and test food
The same test food was used as in Experiment 1, and the procedure was identical with the sole exception that the on-screen
descriptor of the food to be assessed in the CONTROL condition
was Food 386.
3.1.4. Data analysis
Each rating was contrasted between the three conditions using
one-way ANOVA, with gender of assessor as a controlled factor.
Where signicant effects of condition were found, post-hoc contrasts were used to conrm which differences between the three
conditions were signicant, with signicance adjusted for multiple-contrasts using the Bonferroni adjustment.
3.2. Results
Analysis of pleasantness ratings found an overall effect of condition [F(2, 41) = 5.04, p < 0.05]. Inspection of the pleasantness
data, however, revealed that one participant was a signicant outlier (data more than 2SD from the group mean) in the ICE-CREAM
condition. This participant gave a pleasantness rating of 475 to the
smoked salmon ice-cream labelled as ice-cream, compared to a
group mean of 40.1 36.4. Notably, this participant, who was
Spanish, commented that he had experience of savoury ice-cream,
which he liked. Exclusion of these data increased the signicance
of the effect of condition on pleasantness [F(2, 40) = 9.68,
p < 0.001]. Protected contrasts revealed that ratings in the icecream condition were signicantly less than in the other two conditions, but ratings in the control and savoury condition did not
differ signicantly (Fig. 2a).
The effects of labelling on sensory evaluation seen in Experiment 1 were partly replicated. Saltiness also varied with condition
[F(2, 40) = 5.08, p < 0.05], and as in Experiment 1 rated saltiness
was higher in the ice-cream than savoury condition (Fig. 2b), but
savoury and control conditions did not differ signicantly. As in
Experiment 1, perceived avour strength varied with condition
[F(2, 40) = 5.69, p < 0.001], with higher ratings in the ICE-CREAM
than savoury or control conditions (Fig. 2c). There was also a trend
for higher savoury ratings in the ice-cream condition, but this did
not reach overall signicance [F(2, 40) = 1.94, NS]. Although the
mean ratings for bitterness in Experiment 2 were in the same
direction as Experiment, with higher bitterness ratings in the icecream than savoury condition, the overall effect of condition was
not signicant [F(2, 40) = 0.88, NS].
No signicant effects of condition were found on creaminess,
fruitiness, sourness or sweetness evaluations, although in many
ratings there were trends for ratings in the ice-cream condition
standing out as different to the other conditions (tending to be
more sour, less sweet, etc.).
3.3. Conclusion
Experiment 2 suggests that it was the lack of congruity between
the label ice-cream and the experienced sensory quality of the
smoked salmon ice-cream that resulted in the strong aversive response in the ICE-CREAM condition in both Experiment 1 and 2
since reactions in the conditions where the label was informative
and accurate (frozen savoury mousse) and uninformative (CONTROL condition labelled Food 386) were very similar. The differences in hedonic evaluation between the ICE-CREAM and

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M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

Fig. 2. Rated pleasantness (A), saltiness (B) and strength of avour (C) of smoked salmon ice-cream depending on whether this was labelled as ice-cream, frozen savoury
mousse or a neutral food (Control). Data are mean SEM.

SAVOURY conditions in Experiments 1 and 2 were very similar,

with the food rated as having a stronger and more salty avour
in the ice-cream label condition, although the hedonic differences
were much greater than sensory differences.
The similarity in assessment of the salmon ice-cream in the
SAVOURY and CONTROL conditions was surprising since the
appearance of the food might have been predicted to generate
expectations of a sweet ice-cream. However, a shortcoming in
Experiments 1 and 2 was that differences in expectation between
conditions were implied but not tested explicitly. Previous research has assessed the role of expectation by obtaining separate
ratings based on appearance alone prior to sensory testing (e.g.,
Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992). The same approach was discounted here
because of concerns that the inspection of the food during the evaluation of the appearance may have led to participants detecting
the faint odour of sh from the ice-cream, so compromising the label manipulation. However, to test whether the manipulations
used in the present study did generate the inferred expectations,
a nal study examined contrasted the effects of the label manipulations on evaluations of both the expected and actual sensory and
hedonic evaluations of the ice-cream in the three conditions used
in Experiment 2.

this phase. After completion of the nal rating of expected avour,

an additional rating was made based on how condent participants
were about their evaluation of the food by label and appearance.
The question was phrased How condent are you that you have
accurately described the avour of this food?, rated form not at
all (0) to totally (500). Once completed, the food was placed in
front of the participants to allow them to consume a small portion
and make a second set of evaluations, using the same procedure as
in Experiments 1 and 2.
4.1.4. Data analysis
The expected and actual evaluations of the ice-cream were contrasted using ANOVA, with label between-subjects factor and type
of evaluation (expected or actual) within-subjects. Gender of assessor was again included as a controlled factor. Where signicant effects of condition were found, post-hoc contrasts were used to
conrm which differences between the three conditions were signicant, with signicance adjusted for multiple-contrasts using the
Bonferroni adjustment.
5. Results
5.1. Expected avour evaluations

4. Experiment 3
4.1. Method

Average sensory and hedonic evaluations of the expected avour of the salmon ice-cream in the three conditions are summarised in Table 3. These data conrm that the label applied to the

4.1.1. Design
A between-subjects design was used to contrast anticipatory
and actual hedonic and sensory evaluations of the same novel food
(smoked salmon ice-cream) in the three label conditions used in
Experiment 2 (ICE-CREAM, SAVOURY and CONTROL).

Table 3
Expected sensory and hedonic evaluations of the salmon ice-cream in the three label
conditions in Experiment 3

4.1.2. Participants
The participants were 60 untrained assessors, 48 women and 12
men. The recruitment was the same as that in Experiment 2, and
participants were assigned at random to the three conditions, with
20 participants in each condition.
4.1.3. Procedure and test food
The same test food was used as in Experiments 1 and 2. However, in this case when the food was rst presented, participants
rstly made the same set of evaluations as in the previous studies
but based purely on the appearance of the food. The food was
placed towards the back of the test table and participants were instructed to base their evaluations on the appearance alone during

Evaluation

Pleasant
Savoury
Salty
Sweet
Creamy
Fruity
Bitter
Sour
Strong
Condence

Label condition
Ice-cream

Savoury
mousse

Food 386

375a 13
50a 8
31a 6
340a 28
389a 13
322a 15
87 17
56 13
256a 15
329a 17

241b 23
482c 5
323b 30
89c 13
314 b 18
76c 13
104 17
62 11
387b 11
284a 19

258b 18
121b 19
69a 17
275 b 19
320b 16
225b 26
118 20
47 9
300a 20
146b 25

Main effect of
condition1

p < 0.001
p < 0.001
p < 0.001
p < 0.001
p < 0.01
p < 0.001
NS
NS
p < 0.001
p < 0.001

Data are mean SEM, n = 20 in each group

1
Value is signicance for main effect of condition from one-way ANOVA. Means
with different superscripts differ signicantly (bonferroni contrast).

571

M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

food had a large impact on expected sensory and hedonic quality.

The expected avour was rated to be signicantly more pleasant,
sweet, fruity and creamy, and signicantly less savoury and salty,
in the ICE-CREAM than SAVOURY condition. Expected ratings in
the CONTROL condition, where no informative label was given,
were less consistent: ratings for pleasant and creamy were similar
in CONTROL and SAVOURY conditions, but ratings of salty and
strong were similar in CONTROL and ICE-CREAM conditions. On
three ratings, sweet, fruity and savoury, the ratings in the CONTROL condition fell between those in the other conditions, suggesting that the absence of an informative label made the food
ambiguous. This was further reected in the condence ratings
for the expected avour, where condence ratings were signicantly lower in the CONTROL than ICE-CREAM or SAVOURY conditions (Table 3).
5.2. Actual avour evaluations
The evaluations of the avour in the three conditions were very
similar to those in Experiment 2 (Table 4). As before, avour pleasantness was signicantly affected by food label [F(2, 56) = 10.65,
p < 0.001], with signicantly lower ratings in the ICE-CREAM than
CONTROL and SAVOURY conditions. Actual sensory evaluations
were much less affected by label, although both ratings of sweet
[F(2, 56) = 4.16, p < 0.05] and salty [F(2, 56) = 4.21, p < 0.05] did differ
between conditions, with the test food rated as less sweet and more
salty in the ICE-CREAM than CONTROL or SAVOURY conditions.
5.3. Relationship between expected and actual avour
To test whether expectations were assimilated into avour
evaluations, expected and actual avours were contrasted by 2way ANOVA, with condition and rating type (expected or actual
avour) as factors. For pleasantness, there was a signicant interaction between condition and rating type [F(2, 54) = 18.46,
p < 0.001], and these data are shown in Fig. 3a. In all cases actual
pleasantness was lower than expected, but where the label ICECREAM was used, expected pleasantness was the largest, but actual
pleasantness extremely low. Thus rather than assimilation, the lack
of congruence between the expected and actual avour generated
an aversive response. This was not seen where the avour was predicted by the label frozen savour mousse. Expected avour rat-

Table 4
Sensory and hedonic evaluations of the salmon ice-cream in the three label conditions
in Experiment 3
Evaluation

Pleasant
Savoury
Salty
Sweet
Creamy
Fruity
Bitter
Sour
Strong

Label condition
Ice-cream

Savoury
mousse

Food 386

21a 8
434 9
412a 11
28a 9
363 11
16 5
135 23
171 23
439 11

145b 24
407 16
361b 16
86b 19
355 9
32 13
84 13
113 15
410 13

140b 29
393 11
388ab 11
83b 20
351 13
24 8
121 20
121 24
405 12

Main effect of
condition1

p < 0.001
NS
p < 0.05
p < 0.05
NS
NS
NS
NS
NS

Data are mean SEM, n = 20 in each group.

1
Value is signicance for main effect of condition from one-way ANOVA. Means
with different superscripts differ signicantly (bonferroni contrast).

ings in the CONTROL condition also suggested participants had

some expectation of a sweet, fruity taste, although less so than in
the ICE-CREAM condition, but this did not result in such a large
reduction in pleasantness on tasting the food. A similar, but smaller, effect of labelling was seen with sweetness ratings (Fig. 3b),
where again the interaction between rating type (expected or actual) and condition was signicant [F(2, 54 = 18.46, p < 0.001].
Here, although expected sweetness was markedly different between SAVOURY and CONTROL conditions, actual ratings were
very similar. In contrast, the expected sweetness was very high
in the ICE-CREAM condition, but actual ratings were signicantly
lower than in the other conditions.
6. Discussion
Rated pleasantness of the avour of a novel savoury ice-cream
was highly dependent on the label presented when the food was
served. The label ice-cream reliably resulted in lower pleasantness ratings than did the label frozen savoury mousse (Experiments 1 and 2). However, when a neutral control label was
included (Experiment 2), responses to the savoury and control
conditions were very similar. These effects were seen both with
hedonic and sensory changes, with consistent nding of higher rat-

Fig. 3. Expected and actual pleasantness (A) and sweetness (B) of smoked salmon ice-cream depending on whether this was labelled as ice-cream, frozen savoury mousse or a
neutral food (Control). Data are mean SEM.

572

M.R. Yeomans et al. / Food Quality and Preference 19 (2008) 565573

ings of avour strength and saltiness for the food when labelled as
ice-cream.The implication is that the ice-cream label generated
a strong expectation of a sweet, fruity avour, and the surprise of a
strong, salty sh-avoured food resulted in very low pleasantness
ratings (many participants verbally described the food as disgusting). Experiment 3 explicitly measured expected and actual evaluations, and conrmed the interpretation of Experiments 1 and 2
that the ice-cream label did generate an expectation of a sweet,
fruity avour, which then contrasted strongly with the actual
experience of salty sh.
Although past research has shown that expectations generated
by food labels can modify liking for food avours, the majority of
these studies have found assimilation of the expected and actual
experience (Cardello, Maller, Masor, Dubose, & Edelman, 1985;
Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992; Wansink et al., 2005). However the present study demonstrates that where the expected and actual sensory experience are very different (i.e., the contrast of an
expectation for sweet and fruity relative to actual salty sh), the
disconrmed expectation leads to a strong contrast effect, and consequent dislike and rejection of the test food, adding to the very
few studies reporting contrast effects with food stimuli (e.g., Cardello, & Sawyer, 1992; Zellner et al., 2001). Thus where the difference between expectation and actual sensory quality was very
large, the experience was highly unpleasant even for a food that
could be perceived as pleasant on its own (the pleasantness ratings
for the salmon ice-cream in the conditions other than ice-cream
were close to neutral, 250 on the hedonic scale used here). Thus
where expectations were disconrmed and the actual sensory
experience was highly novel and surprising, the reaction was one
of extreme dislike. Although these conditions would rarely be
experienced by a consumer in real-life, the extent to which expectations inuenced liking in the present context demonstrate the
potential for expectations to moderate hedonic evaluation where
there is a clear mis-match between expected and perceived sensory quality. It was also notable that positive expectations about
the novel food generated by the label frozen savoury mousse
did not lead to assimilation of the expected avour since no differences emerged between the congruent and neutral food label conditions in Experiment 3. A possible explanation for this might be
that the expectations generated by the congruent label were not
sufciently strong to facilitate assimilation when the actual food
was tasted, perhaps driven by the unique novelty of the food
tested. This conclusion is supported in part by the nding that condence ratings in the SAVOURY condition were less than in ICECREAM, but notably both were greater than in the CONTROL condition. However, the large difference in condence in ratings between SAVOURY and CONTROL conditions might have been
expected to promote assimilation in the SAVOURY condition. Another possible explanation for the lack of assimilation in the
SAVOURY condition was that the description of the study as evaluation of a novel food generated an expectation of novelty, which
alerted reduced the surprise when salmon ice-cream was tasted in
the CONTROL condition without giving any condence of what
sensory quality they would experience. This possibility could be
assessed in future studies.
The present data also conrm and extend previous ndings on
the role of expectation on sensory evaluation, particularly in relation to evidence for a contrast effect when expectations about sensory quality were disconrmed, a phenomena which has been
rarely reported for the effects of expectations generated by information prior to tasting for food stimuli, where assimilation is again
the normal response to disconrmed expectations. Thus where a
sweet fruity avour was expected but a salty sh avour experienced (the ICE-CREAM condition), the unexpected qualities tended
to be rated as stronger sensory experiences than in conditions
where either the expectation was for a similar product (the

SAVOURY condition), or where information gave no expectation

(the uninformative CONTROL food label). These data are important,
as they provide a rare example of contrast effects in sensory evaluation generated by expectations about avour in a food context.
Although interpreted at the time as evidence of hedonic change,
data in the study by Carlsmith and Aronson (1963) also show contrast effects, with sweet solutions rated as less sweet when bitterness was predicted and vice versa. Contrast effects are more readily
seen in perceptual studies where evaluation of a context stimulus
of higher or lower intensity alters evaluation of subsequent target
stimuli (e.g., Conner, Land, & Booth, 1987; Riskey, Parducci, & Beauchamp, 1979; see Schifferstein, 2001 for review), but no such context stimuli preceded evaluation of the test stimulus in the present
study, suggesting that adaptation or range-frequency effects (Parducci, 1965) cannot explain the current ndings of exaggerated
sensory experience. Thus the present data suggest that disconrmation about sensory expectation can lead to increased intensity
of the unexpected sensory quality, suggesting some top-down control inuence on sensory experience in this context.
The current studies also suggest that beliefs about the nature of a
food generated by the preceding food label were more powerful
than were the visual cues alone. Thus the differences in sensory
and hedonic evaluation of the salmon ice-cream between the three
test conditions all involved the same visual cues, yet responses to
visual cues alone (the CONTROL condition where the food label
was uninformative in Experiments 2 and 3) and visual cues with
an accurate food label (the SAVOURY condition) were the same.
Only where the food label was congruent with the visual cues but
misleading about the actual sensory quality (the ICE-CREAM condition) did differences in sensory and hedonic evaluation emerge.
A limitation of the rst two experiments in the current study
was that no actual evaluation of the expected pleasantness or avour quality of the food was made before the food was consumed.
Although explicit data regarding anticipated avour would have
some value here, we were concerned that asking participants to
evaluate their expectations prior to tasting may have led to them
detect the aroma of sh, and so compromised the lack of congruity
between the label and sensory qualities. Experiment 3, however,
did measure expected and actual ratings and the similarity in sensory evaluations for the actual avour of the ice-cream in Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that completion of expected ratings did
not impact adversely on subsequent hedonic and sensory evaluations. The inclusion of expected and actual ratings in Experiment
3 did demonstrate the extent of the difference between expected
and actual pleasantness.
In summary, these three experiments provide striking evidence
that expectations play a major role in generating hedonic responses to food stimuli, such that the same food was rated as
acceptable when the avour was expected but close to disgusting
when the expected and actual avour were very different. These
data thus add to a small set of studies showing hedonic and sensory contrast effects in avour perception.
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