fooling ourselves

Bloom recalls one famous experiment with wine drinkers done by scientists at Stanford and Cal Tech …

“Half the people are told they’re drinking cheap plunk, the other half are told they’re drinking something out of $100-$150 bottle”, Bloom said.

“It tastes better to them if they THINK they’re drinking from an expensive bottle. And it turns out that if they think they’re drinking expensive wine, parts of the brain that are associated with pleasure and reward light up like a Christmas tree.”

So if I have people over for dinner, I should add a little ‘1’ in front of the price tag, and put it on the table?“, Spencer asked.

“That is the ultimate trick to making wine taste better”, Bloom said.

And it’s the sort of trick that works only on human beings!

Here’s another.