Study: $90 wine tastes better than the same wine at $10

This graph shows the activity in the brain's pleasure center; there's more activity with wine subjects think costs $90 a bottle (top line) than the same wine priced at $10. The arrow shows the moment when the subjects started tasting the wine.
(Credit: CalTech, Stanford)In a study that could make marketing managers and salespeople rub their hands with glee, scientists have used brain-scanning technology to shed new light on the old adage, "You get what you pay for."
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford's business school have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.
Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure. Brain scanning using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed evidence for the researchers' hypothesis that "changes in the price of a product can influence neural computations associated with experienced pleasantness," they said.
The study, by Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel, was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This chart shows that people ranked taste of a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5, and the same for a different wine marked $90 and $10.
(Credit: CalTech, Stanford)The research, along with other studies the authors allude to, are putting a serious dent in economists' notions that experienced pleasantness of a product is based on its intrinsic qualities.
"Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer's ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality," the researchers said. "Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles."
Stephen Shankland covers Google, Yahoo, search, online advertising, portals, digital photography, and related subjects. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered servers, supercomputing, open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen.





alot of wine people are really just "wine snobs." the ones that MUST drink the expensive wine and MUST drink out of a reidel glass. get over yourselves.
did not conclude that subjects found the $90 bottle 'tastier' than
the $10 bottle. They found the subjects simply had a more pleasant
experience -- pretty much what one might expect knowing (or
believing) that one is enjoying an expensive bottle of wine. Unless,
perhaps, one gets stuck with the check.
I can assure that the taste of the wine gets better each time I tell that story.
Dan
http://bernaisesource.blog.com
The primary article actually explains that they also collected subjective ratings of the taste of the "different" wines. This CNET article simply did not report that aspect of the study. So indeed not only were brain areas implicated, but participants reported that the "more expensive" wines tasted better.
Of course the opposite can be said for Guinness. My $2.50 pints always seem to taste better than the $5.50 ones...
Anyhoo, as a scientist I rarely take what is published in the popular press as factual. Always try to consult the primary source.
At any rate, I am not at all surprised by these findings. We know that experience and expectations have dramatic effects on human perceptual processes.
They should have done a completely blind taste test first, then repeat it (same wine and participants) knowing the prices, for a true control.
Regardless, it just means that people are either programming themselves with a pleasure response to expensive consumption, or lying about their perceptions to impress or meet the percieved expectations of others.
Honestly pathetic, really, really pathetic our society has become. All those years of keeping up with the Jones', my car is better than yours, and my wine is better becuase it's more expensive have got us distorting our perceptions, so that we can appear impressive to others. I'll bet most of the participnats in this test, don't know crap about wine, and just assumed because it was more expensive it was better, and responded so, paying no attention to their real preferences. Try some vintage rothschild, heard its real expensive... and tastes like crap too...but its for real conesuers. (apologies, my spellings not with it today)
P.S. All wine taste like crap to me, you won't find me trying to impress anyone with my approval of it, regardless of the price. Try the same test with something not so snobbish, like pizza, or beer, and see what you get.
When you eat Cheetos do you pay attention to your food or the football game? When you eat a very good NY strip steak, do you pay attention to the food or the TV (Or I will admit, the blond)?
Your headline should have said: People are idiots!
Well, don't feel bad... we're not laughing with you.
In reality anyone can slap a high pricetag on a bottle. That does not mean it is worth the price. Even if the wine was great that does not mean it has remained that way. Then there's the whole area of pairing. A lot can go wrong with wine.
Also if your tastebuds are not refined enough you're not going to appreciate $90. Then again what is refined? Who decides that? Many people go by price first, taste second.
The best bottle I've ever found was $14.95. It was sinfully good. Bacchus definately was looking after me that day. But that's me it might not be the same with you.
Women love to think what they are getting is more expensive than it really is, no matter what it is. A lot of them will take much less into consideration after high cost is spent on them. And then once they find out a friend's significant other got it for much less, watch out.
So how many of these were men, and women? Is there a study for each?
- just like monster cables sound $300 better;-)
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by airdrummer
January 15, 2008 1:46 PM PST
- i've always thought economic analysis shoul be done on the complex plane;-)
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