Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Neural Basis for Cognitive Dissonance (Ex-Ante and Ex-Post)

Scientists discover the price of fine-tasting wines

15/01/2008 - More here: ireland.com

The more wine costs, the more people enjoy it, regardless of how it tastes, a study by California researchers has found.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Their study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , says that expectations of quality trigger activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure.

This happens even though the part of the brain that interprets taste is not affected. Although many studies have looked at how marketing affects behaviour, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain.

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