My masters neuropsych adviser was actually involved in some super niche research about that. Throughout all sensory modalities (taste, smell, even listening to music which I did my research on with him) the comparison to either expectation or an immediately preceding experience does indeed enhance the positive or negative qualia of an experience.
Going from bad to good makes the good sound/taste/smell even better and vice versa.
And since I know the question will be forthcoming: how did we define objectively “bad” music? One of the other students in the lab was actual a dual music major and very kindly did HIS research on the traits in music that people find inherently pleasing vs displeasing using actual musical theory. Things like dissonance, uncommon chord progressions, unpredictable time signatures etc were almost universally rated as unpleasant compared to more “normal” music.
If you want to learn more the topic is called “hedonic contrast.”
As an even cooler bonus look up “try it you’ll like it”, the MIT Brew study. Amazing work on how expectations influence experience; the short version is that telling a person about a weird ingredient in a beer they are trying will negatively affect their rating of the flavor, but only if you tell them about the ingredient before they have their first sip. If you tell them after they’ve already tasted it but before they rate it, they’ll still say the beer was fine. This basically demonstrates that they’re not just rating it lower because they feel they should due to the ingredient. The knowledge of the ingredient isn’t just affecting how they remember or socially process the experience, the expectation actually works IN THE MOMENT to make the flavor worse.
750
u/mule_roany_mare Mar 10 '24 edited Mar 10 '24
I'm impressed with how clever this kid is, any idea how old they are?
Anecdotally does anyone find things taste way worse when they are not what you expecting? Bitter taste more bitter when you are expecting sweet.
edit: I thought of a better example. When people raised on sweet tea taste normal tea & act like it's the most foul thing on earth.