Information affects consumer assessment of sweet and bitter solutions

We examined the effects of information on consumer's perception of basic tastes and tested the hypothesis that individual variations in taste sensitivity may be inversely correlated with persuasiveness. 111 subjects were grouped based on ability to rate sweet and bitter solutions (high, medium, and low ability) and the effects of varying information about the solutions before assessment were measured. Consumers changed ratings after reading the information regardless of their ability. When a similar experiment was carried out with 23 trained people, information had no effect on ratings. Results suggest that other factors (such as experience, training) control the way consumers influenced by information when assessing sensory attributes