Conditioned enhancement of human's liking for flavor by pairing with sweetness

Debra A. Zellner, Paul Rozin, Michael Aron, Carol Kulish

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

200 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper reports a procedure, like classical conditioning, that produces enhancement of liking for flavors by humans. The procedure is "pairing" of a relatively neutral flavor with sugar (a hedonically positive taste). Specifically, subjects drank 24 small samples of flavor A sweetened and 24 small samples of flavor B unsweetened. They were then tested for their liking for flavors A and B, both sweetened and unsweetened. In three different studies, varying in a number of aspects of stimulus presentations and context, a relative enhancement in liking for flavor A appeared both on the day of exposure and 1 week later. An absolute enhancement in liking of flavor B (a "mere exposure" effect) also occurred in two of the three experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)338-350
Number of pages13
JournalLearning and Motivation
Volume14
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1983

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