Information affects consumer assessment of sweet and bitter solutions

We examined the effects of information on consumer's perception of basis tastes and tested the hypothesis that individual variations in taste sensitivity maybe 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 af their ability. When a similar experiment was carried our with 23 trained people, information had no effect on ratings. Results suggest that other factors (such as experience. training) control the way consumers are influenced by information when assessing sensory attributes.