Expectations vs reality
Steve
Excerpts from
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/24/grape_expectations/?page=full
Scientists at CalTech and Stanford recently published the results of a
peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons
at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although
the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the
scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.
The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines
tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper
wines. When subjects were told they were getting a more expensive
wine, there was more activity in a part of the brain known to be
involved in our experience of pleasure. People expect expensive wines
to taste better, and then their brains literally make it so.
After the researchers finished their brain imaging, they asked the
subjects to taste the five different wines again, only this time the
scientists didn't provide any price information. Although the subjects
had just listed the $90 wine as the most pleasant, they now completely
reversed their preferences. When the tasting was truly blind, when the
subjects were no longer biased by their expectations, the cheapest
wine got the highest ratings.
The human brain isn't built for objectivity. The brain doesn't
passively take in perceptions. Rather, brain regions involved in
developing expectations can systematically alter the activity of areas
involved in sensation. The cortex is "cooking the books," adjusting
its own inputs depending on what it expects. People experience reality
not as it is, but as they expect it to be.
A similar mental process helps explain a wide variety of seemingly
bizarre consumer behaviors. Baba Shiv, a neuroeconomist at Stanford,
supplied people with an "energy" drink containing a potent brew of
sugar and caffeine. Some participants paid full price for the drinks,
while others were offered a discount.
The participants were then asked to solve a series of word puzzles.
The people who paid discounted prices consistently solved fewer
puzzles than the people who paid full price for the drinks, even
though the drinks were identical.
Since we expect cheaper goods to be less effective, they generally are
less effective, even if they are identical to more expensive products.
This is why brand-name aspirin works better than generic aspirin and
why Coke tastes better than cheaper colas, even if most consumers
can't tell the difference in blind taste tests.
We have these general beliefs about the world - for example, that
cheaper products are of lower quality - and they translate into
specific expectations about specific products.
One of the implications is that it's possible to make a product more
"effective" by increasing its price. A good marketing campaign can
have a similar effect, as it instills consumers with lofty
expectations about the quality of the product.
Expectations can even play havoc with experts. A few years ago,
Frederic Brochet, a cognitive psychologist at the University of
Bordeaux, conducted a rather mischievous experiment. He invited 54
experienced wine tasters to give their impressions of a red wine and a
white wine. Not surprisingly, the experts described the wines with the
standard set of adjectives: the red wine was "jammy" and full of
"crushed red fruit." The white wine, meanwhile, tasted of lemon,
peaches, and honey.
The next day, Brochet invited the wine experts back for another
tasting. This time, however, he dyed the white wine with red food
coloring, so that it looked as if they were tasting two red wines. The
trick worked. The experts described the dyed white wine with the
language typically used to describe red wines. The peaches and honey
tasted like black currants.
According to Brochet, the lesson of his experiment is that our
experience is the end result of an elaborate interpretive process, in
which the brain parses our sensations based upon our expectations. If
we think a wine is red, or that a certain brand is better, then we
will interpret our senses to preserve that belief. Such distortions
are a fundamental feature of the brain.
--
Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address.
...Lane Olinghouse
Rod Speed
And thats why randomised double blind trials were invented.
Steve
>And thats why randomised double blind trials were invented.
Yeah, but the point is that you're typically not able to perform a
randomized double-blind trial. And it helps to recognize that your
brain may be absolutely convinced that one product is better than
another simply because it costs more.
Billy
pretended the higher priced wine was better.
Some may have thought it was better as if the price mad a difference but
I doubt it.
Anybody that thinks alcohol that smells like grapes but taste like
rotten potatoes is nuts anyway.
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>> And thats why randomised double blind trials were invented.
> Yeah, but the point is that you're typically not
> able to perform a randomized double-blind trial.
Wrong with the absolute vast bulk of what was discussed in your post.
> And it helps to recognize that your brain may be absolutely convinced
> that one product is better than another simply because it costs more.
And thats why randomised double blind trials were invented.
Jeff Jonas
>http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/24/grape_expectations/?page=full
>
>Scientists at CalTech and Stanford recently published the results of a
>peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons
>at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although
>the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the
>scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.
Penn and Teller did that with water for one of their "Bullshit" shows.
Shawn Hirn
wrote:
> They didn't want to look or be perceived as unsophisticated so they
> pretended the higher priced wine was better.
> Some may have thought it was better as if the price mad a difference but
> I doubt it.
> Anybody that thinks alcohol that smells like grapes but taste like
> rotten potatoes is nuts anyway.
A few years ago, I was really into wine and I attended many wine
tastings and attended a few courses on wines, such Wines of Italy, Wines
of Nappa Valley, etc. I tend to go for the lower priced wines, and
fairly young vintages. Several wine experts told me that Europeans tend
to favor older and more expensive wines and Americans tend to favor
younger and cheaper wines. For example, I think the $3 bottles of
Charles Shaw wines from Trader Joes are fine, but a friend who's from
Vienna thinks they taste like grape juice.
I do think many people have the mistaken view that more expensive things
equate to better things, not just with wine. When I was a freshman in
college, I worked in a takeout seafood place. We sold a lot of fresh and
cooked seafood. One day, my boss, who owned the business decided to try
an experiment. We made up two trays of fresh flounder filets and put
them in the display case. Both trays consisted of flounder from exactly
the same shipment. My boss priced one tray for $1 more per pound than
the other tray. The more expensive flounder sold out much faster than
the cheaper flounder. Not once did anyone ask us what the difference
between the two trays of fish was, they all just assumed that the more
expensive fish was better. What other reason could they have had for
buying it without asking why two trays of identical fish were not priced
the same?
The Real Bev
> "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>And thats why randomised double blind trials were invented.
>
> Yeah, but the point is that you're typically not able to perform a
> randomized double-blind trial. And it helps to recognize that your
> brain may be absolutely convinced that one product is better than
> another simply because it costs more.
Yours, maybe. Not mine. Things are better because they cost less than
they should, not more.
--
Cheers,
Bev
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
If it weren't for pain, we wouldn't have any fun at all.
The Real Bev
> In article <Rl_xj.36$AL1...@newsfe06.lga>, Billy <B...@BillyJoe.Bob>
> wrote:
>
>> They didn't want to look or be perceived as unsophisticated so they
>> pretended the higher priced wine was better.
>> Some may have thought it was better as if the price mad a difference but
>> I doubt it.
>> Anybody that thinks alcohol that smells like grapes but taste like
>> rotten potatoes is nuts anyway.
>
> A few years ago, I was really into wine and I attended many wine
> tastings and attended a few courses on wines, such Wines of Italy, Wines
> of Nappa Valley, etc. I tend to go for the lower priced wines, and
> fairly young vintages. Several wine experts told me that Europeans tend
> to favor older and more expensive wines and Americans tend to favor
> younger and cheaper wines. For example, I think the $3 bottles of
> Charles Shaw wines from Trader Joes are fine,
What, they raised the price of Two Buck Chuck? Outrageous!
> but a friend who's from
> Vienna thinks they taste like grape juice.
I'm from California and I think grape juice tastes better than ANY wine
I've ever tasted.
> I do think many people have the mistaken view that more expensive things
> equate to better things, not just with wine. When I was a freshman in
> college, I worked in a takeout seafood place. We sold a lot of fresh and
> cooked seafood. One day, my boss, who owned the business decided to try
> an experiment. We made up two trays of fresh flounder filets and put
> them in the display case. Both trays consisted of flounder from exactly
> the same shipment. My boss priced one tray for $1 more per pound than
> the other tray. The more expensive flounder sold out much faster than
> the cheaper flounder. Not once did anyone ask us what the difference
> between the two trays of fish was, they all just assumed that the more
> expensive fish was better. What other reason could they have had for
> buying it without asking why two trays of identical fish were not priced
> the same?
Stupidity
Unwillingness to appear ignorant of the finer points of flounder
Unwillingness to be perceived as a person who would settle for less
than the best (or, in this case, better) or most expensive
Illiteracy/innumeracy
Inattention
Anthony Matonak
...
> Isn't this just the Placebo Effect?
>
> Kinda like when people spend $400 on a radar detector, suddenly every
> time they pass a cop they believe the RD "saved my ass!"
It's more like the cell phone "booster" and "anti-radiation" stickers.
Anthony
RodSpeed,_dividends_and_cash_flow_are_bubblicious
They do this all the time with house-branded groceries. Exact same
product but change the packaging and pricing. The stores figure that
there are shoppers who will immediately buy the higher-priced,
'premium' item while the budget shopper looks for the lower priced
one. I guess it is legal as long as the packaging does not state the
higher item is better than the lower priced one in some tangible way...
Steve
>Isn't this just the Placebo Effect?
>Kinda like when people spend $400 on a radar detector, suddenly every
>time they pass a cop they believe the RD "saved my ass!"
And if they paid $600, they believe it even more.
Coffee's For Closers
sr...@comcast.net says...
> In article <Rl_xj.36$AL1...@newsfe06.lga>, Billy <B...@BillyJoe.Bob>
> wrote:
>
> > They didn't want to look or be perceived as unsophisticated so they
> > pretended the higher priced wine was better.
> > Some may have thought it was better as if the price mad a difference but
> > I doubt it.
> A few years ago, I was really into wine and I attended many wine
> tastings and attended a few courses on wines, such Wines of Italy, Wines
> of Nappa Valley, etc. I tend to go for the lower priced wines, and
> fairly young vintages.
I like Thunderbird. Vintage a couple months ago. It has a
complex bouquet of both apples and antifreeze.
--
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