ISSN : 1226-9654
‘눈으로 먹는다’는 표현이 있을 정도로 시각 정보는 맛 지각에 큰 영향을 끼친다. 특히, 시각 정보 중에서 색상 정보가 갖는 효과는 매우 강력한 것으로 알려져 있다. 본 연구는 대표적인 기호식품인 초콜릿을 대상으로 색상 정보가 맛 지각에 미치는 영향을 확인하였다. 예비 실험을 통해, 특정한 맛과 강하게 연합되어 있는 색상을 확인하였고, 그 결과 신맛에 강하게 연합되어 있는 노란색과 쓴맛에 강하게 연합되어 있는 녹색을 실험에 사용하였다. 하얀색 초콜릿에 아무런 맛이 나지 않는 노란색과 녹색 색소를 사용하여, 동일한 맛이지만, 각기 색이 다른 세 종류의 초콜릿을 실험자극으로 제작하였다. 본 실험에서는 세 종류의 초콜릿 중 하나의 초콜릿을 무선적으로 섭취하게 한 후, 해당 초콜릿에 대한 단맛, 신맛, 쓴맛을 7점 척도로 평정하게 하였다. 실험 결과, 노란색 초콜릿을 섭취했을 경우, 신맛에 대한 강도가 높게 지각되는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 각 색상 정보에 따른 기대 효과가 맛 지각에 영향을 끼칠 수 있음을 보여준다.
The expression ‘what looks good tastes good’ implies a close relationship between taste and visual information. In particular, color information has been considered to significantly influence taste perception. The current study explored the effects of color information on the taste perception of chocolate, a representative favorite food. A preliminary experiment exploring color-taste associations found that yellow is strongly associated with sour tastes and green with bitter tastes. These colors were selected as stimuli in the main experiment. Two batches of white chocolate were colored with flavorless yellow and green food coloring, respectively, while a third batch was left uncolored as a control stimuli. This process yielded three colors of chocolate with the same taste. After eating one randomly assigned piece of chocolate of the three colors, each participant was asked to rate its sweet, sour, and bitter characteristics on a seven-point scale. The study found that the yellow chocolate scored a significantly higher sour rating than chocolates with the other colors. These results show that expectations based on color information can influence the taste perception of chocolate.
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