Using Single Colors and Color Pairs to Communicate Basic Tastes II: Foreground–Background Color Combinations
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People associate basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) with specific colors (e.g., pink or red, green or yellow, black or purple, and white or blue). In the present study, we investigated whether a color bordered by another color (either the same or different) would give rise to stronger taste associations relative to a single patch of color. We replicate previous findings, highlighting the existence of a robust crossmodal correspondence between individual colors and basic tastes. On occasion, color pairs were found to communicate taste expectations more consistently than were single color patches. Furthermore, and in contrast to a recent study in which the color pairs were shown side-by-side, participants took no longer to match the color pairs with tastes than the single colors (they had taken twice as long to respond to the color pairs in the previous study). Possible reasons for these results are discussed, and potential applications for the results, and for the testing methodology developed, are outlined.
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The combination of pink and white is rated significantly sweeter than white and pink represented individually as single colours.
“Woods et al [58] examined how single colours compared to colour combinations were rated in terms of sweetness, and found that the combination of pink and white was rated significantly sweeter than white and pink represented individually as single colours.”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [58]
Experiment 2’s Methods include pink–white combinations and a pink-only patch among the sweet-taste stimuli, and its Results report significant differences among the sweet-taste patches. But the Results do not establish that pink–white was rated significantly sweeter than either pink or white alone; white alone was not among the sweet-taste stimuli in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 instead identifies pink–purple as a combination more consistently linked with sweetness than its constituent colors. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPairwise combinations of colours have stronger associations with sweetness compared to single colours.
“Woods et al. [58] found that the pairwise combinations of colours had stronger associations with sweetness as compared to single colours.”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [58]
Experiment 1’s Results and Discussion report that some colour pairs, specifically pink–purple and purple–white, were more consistently linked with sweetness than their constituent single colours. The citing sentence omits the qualification that this was true of some pairs, not colour pairs generally. No page number is available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Woods, A. T., Marmolejo-Ramos, F., Velasco, C., & Spence, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Gösta Ekman Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden
- Corresponding author
- Woods, Andy T.
- Venue
- i-Perception
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-09-20
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 2041669516663750-2041669516663750
- ISSN
- 2041-6695 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5034334
- OpenAlex
- W2522544708
- Cited by
- 37
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 4.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- i-Perception (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/L007053/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Color perception and design
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- cross-modal correspondence, basic taste, taste expectations, color patches
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