Expensive Taste Although wine experts may be able to discern subtle differences among wines, amateurs may not be as objective. To determine the effect of price on perceived quality, Hilke Plassmann and her colleagues (2008) asked participants to decide which tasted better: wine poured from a bottle labeled as costing $90 or from a bottle that cost $10. Although the wine in the two bottles was identical, participants overwhelmingly thought the $90 bottle tasted better. Their subjective, verbal rating was confirmed by brain scans: Activity in a brain region associated with pleasant sensations was much higher when they sipped the wine that they thought cost $90 a bottle than when they sipped the same wine from a bottle that supposedly cost $10. The moral: Many different factors affect taste, not the least of which is your expectation of just how good something is likely to taste.
Ken Seet/age fotostock