Ashley & Katy's Psychology Experiment

What went wrong?

Our Hypothesis

We thought that more of the people that we sampled would guess the flavor wrong. We wanted to sample 40 people but we only got to sample 30.

What went right?

We wanted to see if the color of something could actually fool our taste buds, and the results of our experiment showed that some people could not identify the taste correctly.

We thought that our participates would be fooled by the color of the drinks and not be able to identify the flavor.

Our Results

Blue

Green

Males that got it right - 62%

Males that got it wrong - 38%

Males that got it right - 69%

Males that got it wrong - 31%

Females that got it right - 76%

Females that got it wrong - 24%

Females that got it right - 82%

Females that got it wrong - 18%

74%- Apple

3%- Sour Water

3%- Fruit Punch

3%- Cranberry

3%- Grape Juice

3%- Cherry

3%- Apple Cider

8%- Blue Raspberry

78% - Apple

7% - Grape

3% - Watermelon

3% - Fruit Punch

3% - Apple Lime

3% - Berry

3% - Apple Cider

Red

Males that got it right - 62%

Males that got it wrong - 38%

Females that got it right - 76%

Females that got it wrong - 24%

70% - Apple

4% - Grape

3% - Strawberry

3% - Fruit Punch

3% - Apple Banana

7% - Cherry

10% - Apple Cider

How does this connect?

Why does this interest us?

We sampled 12 middle school kids, 15 high school kids, and 3 adults. We gave them a form to fill out. They had to tell us what their race, grade, gender, if they smoke, and if they have a cold (because that can effect the taste buds). At the bottom of the page were the words green, red, and blue so that they could write what each color tasted like.

We wanted to see if the color of something could actually fool our taste buds.

We can connect this experiment to Psychology by showing how neurotransmitters send messages to the brain for the taste of food and drinks, but the brain can sometimes block the messages due to color.

What our experiment was?

Peoples' minds generalize products based on prior knowledge and experiences. Therefore, we are manipulated to believe how certain things should taste.

Our project examined whether people’s perceptions of taste are influenced by their sight.

We will see if the color of a drink effects a person’s perception of taste to see if our eyes can really fool our taste buds.

Does Color of Food Affect Taste?

How we did it!

We bought 3 bottles of apple juice and put red food coloring in one, blue food coloring in the next and green in the last.

We poured these in white styrofoam cups so that our participants could see the color of the juice (they were also told what color they were about to drink right before they drank it). We made sure that we did everything in order to the form so that we didn't accidentally get the colors mixed up.

The Taste of Color

Can the color of something really effect the taste?