Effects of noise and distraction on alcohol perception

Abstract

a b s t r a c tRecent research demonstrated that noise unconnected to the target stimulus can alter taste perception of food, but it is not clear whether similar effects might be seen with respect to alcohol. This is particularly important, as it might help explain previous reports of higher/faster alcohol consumption in loud music environments. In the between subjects experiment here, participants (n = 80) completed standardised taste and olfactory tests, followed by a taste test of alcoholic beverages varying in strength (0, 1.9, 3.9, 5.6, and 7.5 pct abv) in a randomly allocated distractive or control condition. Distractive conditions were either music, shadow (listening and repeating a news story) or shadow and music (S-Music). We found that exposure to music led to higher sweetness ratings compared to all remaining groups. Interestingly, discrimination of alcohol strength was impaired for individuals in the S-Music compared to remaining groups which was accompanied by increased negative mood. This is the first experimental work to demonstrate how music and other forms of distraction alter taste perception of alcohol and suggest a mechanism by which distraction leads to increases in alcohol consumption.

Looking for crossmodal correspondences between classical music and fine wine

“…and the higher level semantic judgments that people make about a wine's qualities (see [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][36][37][38][39][40][41][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]). It would therefore be interesting in future research, to compare people's rating of a wine when the putatively matching music is played versus when mismatching music is played instead.…”

“…In addition, several other studies have now demonstrated that changing the music that happens to be playing in the background affects people's rating of everything from whisky ( [26]; see also [27]) through to a bittersweet chocolate dessert [28], and from gelato [29] through to functional and dietetic foods [30], not to mention beer [31][32][33]. What we hear, then, can exert a profound influence on what we taste -and no less importantly on what we think we taste (see [34], for a review).…”

Wine and music (II): can you taste the music? Modulating the experience of wine through music and sound

“…This too might be expected to influence our perception and appreciation of wine [22,23]. A growing body of scientific evidence also demonstrates that sounds that are too loud can lead to a crossmodal suppression of taste and alcohol perception (e.g., [24][25][26]; see [27] for a review). Finally here, one could imagine how even simply knowing that a particular piece of music had been chosen, or better still, composed, to go with a specific wine could exert a generalized uplift effect on one's multisensory tasting experience (cf.…”

Assessing the influence of the multisensory environment on the whisky drinking experience

“…In another recent study, Stafford et al [20] had 80 participants take a sip from each of five alcoholic drinks (varying in alcohol strength). These researchers reported that auditory stimulation (that is, music that had been pre-selected to be distracting), affected participants' ability to discriminate the relative alcohol content of the various drinks.…”