Disentangling cross-modality and affect in “sonic seasoning”: The effect of music associated with different degrees of sweetness and valence on food perception

The presence of music while eating can influence how foods are perceived. One line of inquiry has focused on the potential of music to evoke taste-related associations (such as perceiving a song as "sweet") to enhance the perception of congruent taste/flavor attributes in foods. However, music is also an expression of emotion, and its influence on mood has been put forward as an alternative explanation to why music changes taste perception. Disentangling both effects remains a challenge since taste and affective dimensions (e.g., valence) are usually highly correlated. This work examines the effectiveness of two pairs of soundtracks with different degrees of association with the sweet taste (Experiment 1a) or varying valence (Experiment 1b) in shaping food perception. In the two experiments, participants tasted foods differing in sugar content (i.e., cucumber, croissant, banana, and chocolate) while listening to the soundtracks and evaluated each sample on sweetness, liking, valence, and probability of future consumption. The results show that the higher (vs. lower) sweetness soundtrack significantly increased ratings in all dimensions. In contrast, no differences were observed in any of the dependent measures when listening to the higher valence (more positive) versus the lower valence (less positive) soundtrack. These findings seem to support the hypothesis that taste correspondences can contribute to modulating the multisensory eating experience. In contrast, it appears that when controlling for sweet taste correspondences, differences in the valence of music stimuli have a less salient impact on food evaluation. The theoretical implications of these findings and their potential applications to promoting healthier eating are discussed.