Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 99, 1 April 2016, Pages 112-120
Appetite

Mouth-watering words: Articulatory inductions of eating-like mouth movements increase perceived food palatability

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.01.018Get rights and content

Abstract

We explored the impact of consonantal articulation direction of names for foods on expected palatability for these foods (total N = 256). Dishes (Experiments 1–2) and food items (Experiment 3) were labeled with names whose consonants either wandered from the front to the back of the mouth (inward, e.g., PASOKI) or from the back to the front of the mouth (outward; e.g., KASOPI). Because inward (outward) wandering consonant sequences trigger eating-like (expectoration-like) mouth movements, dishes and foods were rated higher in palatability when they bore an inward compared to an outward wandering name. This effect occurred already under silent reading and for hungry and satiated participants alike. As a boundary condition, this articulation effect did occur when also additional visual information on the product was given (Experiment 3), but vanished when this visual information was too vivid and rich in competing palatability cues (Experiment 2). Future marketing can exploit this effect by increasing the appeal of food products by using inward wandering brand names, that is, names that start with the lips and end in the throat.

Section snippets

An articulatory induction of eating-like mouth movements

The intake of food, such as during sucking, drinking, slurping and simply eating, is realized by muscular movements of the mouth, involving the lips, the tongue, and the pharyngeal muscles in the throat (Duffy, 2007, Hejnol and Martindale, 2008, Rosenthal, 1999, Rozin, 1996). The specific muscular pattern to propel food and liquid from the entrance of the mouth through the oral cavity into the pharynx and the esophagus is a sequence of muscle contractions starting in the front of the mouth –the

Participants

N = 82 non-psychology students from the University of Cologne (49 female; mean age 22, SD = 4) were approached on the campus and invited to take part in the 5 min task for a candy reward (that was given to them after the task, of course).

Materials

We used the stimulus pool of 60 inward and 60 outward words designed for German phonation by Topolinski, Maschmann et al., (2014, Experiment 5). The original stimulus pool can be retrieved at http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036477.supp. For this pool, consonants

Results

In 4 (<1%) of the trials participants mistyped their response (they either falsely typed in a letter or a number exceeding the provided scale). These responses were discarded from the analysis. Dish names with inward wandering words were rated as being more palatable (M = 4.77, SE = 0.12) than dish names with outward wandering words (M = 4.57, SE = 0.13), t(81) = 2.88, p = .005, 95% CIdifference [0.06, 0.32], dz = 0.32. This effect did not correlate with self-reported hunger or time since last

Discussion

The present experiment yields a first demonstration that simply naming a dish with a word that features inward consonantal articulation spots increases the expected palatability of that dish. The effect size obtained, dz = 0.32, is in the range of previously found effect sizes (Topolinski, Boecker, et al., 2015). Interestingly, this effect was not influenced by participants' hunger. We found this in all of the present experiments and will discuss this in more detail in the General Discussion.

Participants

N = 89 non-psychology students from the University of Cologne (58 female; mean age 23, SD = 4) were again approached on the campus and invited to take part in the 5 min task for a candy reward.

Materials

We again used the inward and outward words from Experiment 1. In addition, we also used a third category of words that had no particular but rather mixed consonantal transition directions. We used these stimuli from a baseline experiment in Topolinski, Maschmann et al., (2014, Experiment 5). These control

Results

In 7 (<1%) of the trials participants mistyped their response (these trials were discarded). Over the averaged ratings, we conducted a 3 (Consonantal articulation direction: inward, mixed, outward) × 2 (Image palatability: high, low) Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), which only detected a main effect of image palatability, F(1, 88) = 192.15, p < .001, ηp2 = 0.69. No other effect was significant (Fs < 1.2, ps > 0.30). As can be seen in Fig. 2, dishes with palatable images (M = 6.29, SE = 0.11) were

Discussion

Providing pictorial information of a dish in addition to the mere name of the dish completely eliminated any impact of consonantal articulation direction of dish names on expected palabatibility of these dishes. Thus, one boundary condition of an articulory effect on palatability is the competition with strong visual information on palatability, which is a strong determinant of attitudes towards foods (e.g., Hurling and Shepherd, 2003, Koch and Koch, 2003) and has generally more impact on

Participants

N = 85 non-psychology students from the University of Cologne (48 female; mean age 24, SD = 4) were again approached on the campus and invited to take part in the 5 min task for a candy reward.

Materials and procedure

We used again the inward and outward words from Experiment 1. Because we had only ten images per product category available, we omitted the mixed wanderings control words (implemented in Experiment 2) to ensure an appropriate number of trials for each cell of the experimental design. Conceptually, the

Results

Six (<1%) trials were discarded due to mistyped responses. Over the averaged ratings, we conducted a 2 (Consonantal articulation direction: inward, outward) × 4 (Product: beans, cheese, juice, wine) ANOVA. We found a main effect of consonantal articulation direction, F(1, 82) = 8.99, p = .004, ηp2 = 0.10. No other effect was significant (Fs < 2, ps > 0.13). Collapsed over all products, products with inward going names (M = 5.30, SD = 0.92) were rated as being more palatable than products with

Discussion

Realizing a condition in which visual information on food palatability is provided but this information is of minor diagnostic value because it does not vary much across stimuli we found that the articulation direction of food names indeed influenced expected palatability. The effect size was similar as in Experiment 1 where no pictorial information was provided.

Limitations

The present studies have several limitations that should briefly be discussed. First of all, numerically, the present effects are small, for instance in Experiments 1 and 3 we only found a difference of 0.2 points on a 10 points rating scale. This limits the applied implications, for instance, for the retailing and marketing sector. However, statistically, the effects were robust. Also, in retailing marketing campaigns, many a little makes a mickle, due to the amount of products sold: The value

Applied implications and speculations for future research

These are interesting applied implications of this effect. Marketing agencies and product developers can use the articulation direction of food products to increase expected palatability of their products already in the shelf. Restaurant owners can exploit this effect on their menues, but should avoid also placing images of the foods along with the names, because this would erase the articulation impact (see Experiment 2). For shop displays where there are many homogenous specimen for a given

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, TO 705/1-1). We thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable and thoughtful input.

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