The taste & affect music database: Subjective rating norms for a new set of musical stimuli

Wearable sensors to measure the influence of sonic seasoning on wine consumers in a live context: a preliminary proof-of-concept study

BACKGROUND

Any action capable of creating expectations about product quality would be able to modulate experienced pleasantness. In this context, during the 2022 edition of the Internet Festival (Pisa, Italy) a 'social experiment' was promoted to set up an affordable and reliable methodology based on wearable sensors to measure the emotions aroused in a live context on consumers by different kinds of wines. Therefore, five wines (two faulty ones and three high-quality samples) were proposed to 50 non-selected consumers in an arousing context with live jazz music as background. Both explicit (questionnaires) and two different approaches for implicit methods (electrocardiogram (ECG) recorded by wearable sensors vs. smartphones), the latter performed on a subgroup of 16, to measure the emotions aroused by wines and music were utilized synergistically.

RESULTS

According to our findings: (i) wine undoubtedly generates a significant emotional response on consumers; (ii) this answer is multifaceted and attributable to the quality level of the wine tasted. In fact, all things being equal, while drinking wine even untrained consumers can perfectly recognize good wines compared to products of lower quality; (iii) high-quality wines are able to induce a spectrum of positive emotions, as observed by the analysis of ECG signals, especially when they are coupled with background music.

CONCLUSION

The framework has certainly played to the advantage of good-quality wines, fostering their positive emotional characteristics on the palate even of some less experienced consumers, thanks to a dragging effect towards a positive mood generated by the surrounding conditions (good music in a beautiful location). © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Individuals' Food Preferences can be Influenced by the Music Styles: An ERP Study

Studies have shown that a cross-modal association between listening to music and eating. This study aims to explore the influence of music style on individuals' food preferences and provide evidence for understanding multi-sensory research. Twenty-seven participants participated in the experiment which consisted of two parts. First, participants completed basic demographic information, followed by a food choice task after exposure to four different music styles: classical, jazz, rap, and rock, with ERP data recorded simultaneously. The behavioral results showed that participants selected more high-calorie foods after exposure to jazz and rock music compared to low-calorie foods. Additionally, during jazz and rock music, participants selected more high-calorie foods, while they favored low-calorie foods during classical music. The ERP results showed that the N1 amplitudes were smallest during the food choice task following the classical music and greatest during the food choice task following the rock music, while the N450 amplitudes were smallest during the food choice task following the jazz music. P2 amplitudes were smallest during the food choice task following the rock music and greatest during the food choice task following the classical music, and P3 amplitudes during the food choice task following jazz music were the greatest. The aforementioned ERP differences were observed irrespective of food choices. However, we did not find a significant interaction between foods (high and low-calorie) and music. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between body satisfaction and P3 amplitudes for classical, jazz, and rock music, with BMI negatively correlated with body satisfaction. This study provides innovative practical perspectives for healthy eating.

Normative ratings for the Kitchen and Food Sounds (KFS) database

Sounds are important sensory cues for food perception and acceptance. We developed and validated a large-scale database of kitchen and food sounds (180 stimuli) capturing different stages of preparing, cooking, serving, and/or consuming foods and beverages and sounds of packaging, kitchen utensils, and appliances. Each sound was evaluated across nine subjective evaluative dimensions (random order), including stimuli-related properties (e.g., valence, arousal) and food-related items (e.g., healthfulness, appetizingness) by a subsample of 51 to 64 participants (Mdn = 54; N = 332; 69.6% women, Mage = 27.46 years, SD = 10.20). Participants also identified each sound and rated how confident they were in such identification. Results show that, overall, participants could correctly identify the sound or at least recognize the general sound categories. The stimuli of the KFS database varied across different levels (low, moderate, high) of the evaluative dimensions under analysis, indicating good adequacy to a broad range of research purposes. The correlation analysis showed a high degree of association between evaluative dimensions. The sociodemographic characteristics of the sample had a limited influence on the stimuli evaluation. Still, some aspects related to food and cooking were associated with how the sounds are evaluated, suggesting that participants' proficiency in the kitchen should be considered when planning studies with food sounds. Given its broad range of stimulus categories and evaluative dimensions, the KFS database (freely available at OSF ) is suitable for different research domains, from fundamental (e.g., cognitive psychology, basic sensory science) to more applied research (e.g., marketing, consumer science).

The Neural Correlates of Food Preference among Music Kinds

The calorie and taste choices of food have been shown to be related to the external environment, including music. Previous studies have mostly focused on manipulating basic auditory parameters, with few scholars exploring the impact of complex musical parameters on food selection. This study explored the effects of different kinds of music (classical, rock, jazz, and hip-hop) on food liking based on the calories (high and low) and taste (sweet and salty) using event-related potentials (ERPs). Twenty-four participants (8 males, 16 females) were recruited from Southwest University, China to participate in the food liking task using a Likert seven-point rating and simultaneously recording EEG signals (N2, P2, N3, and LPC). This study used repeated-measures analyses of covariances and found that the score of the high-calorie foods was greater than that of the low-calorie foods. Additionally, results revealed that the score in classical music was greatest for sweet foods, while there was no difference among music kinds in the salty foods. The ERP results showed that P2 amplitudes were greater for sweet foods than those for the salty foods. N2 amplitudes for the salty foods were greater than those for the sweet foods during rock music; in addition, N2 amplitudes during hip-hop music were greatest for sweet foods. However, N2 amplitudes during rock music were the greatest for salty foods. The results also revealed that N2 amplitudes during hip-hop music were greater than those during jazz music. This study provides unique operational insights for businesses.

Construction of a Chinese traditional instrumental music dataset: A validated set of naturalistic affective music excerpts

Music is omnipresent among human cultures and moves us both physically and emotionally. The perception of emotions in music is influenced by both psychophysical and cultural factors. Chinese traditional instrumental music differs significantly from Western music in cultural origin and music elements. However, previous studies on music emotion perception are based almost exclusively on Western music. Therefore, the construction of a dataset of Chinese traditional instrumental music is important for exploring the perception of music emotions in the context of Chinese culture. The present dataset included 273 10-second naturalistic music excerpts. We provided rating data for each excerpt on ten variables: familiarity, dimensional emotions (valence and arousal), and discrete emotions (anger, gentleness, happiness, peacefulness, sadness, solemnness, and transcendence). The excerpts were rated by a total of 168 participants on a seven-point Likert scale for the ten variables. Three labels for the excerpts were obtained: familiarity, discrete emotion, and cluster. Our dataset demonstrates good reliability, and we believe it could contribute to cross-cultural studies on emotional responses to music.

Spice up the moment: The influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time

Embodied cognition contends that sensorimotor experiences undergird cognitive processes. Three embodied cross-domain metaphorical mappings constitute quintessential illustrations: spatial navigation and orientation underpin the conceptualization of time and emotion and gustatory sensation underlies the formulation of emotion. Threading together these strands of insights, the present research consisted of three studies explored the potential influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time. The results revealed a positive correlation between spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor for time such that individuals who enjoyed spicy taste (Study 1) and who consumed spicy (vs. salty) snack (Study 2) exhibited a predilection for the ego-moving perspective when cognizing a temporally ambiguous event. Because both spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor are associated with anger and approach motivation, the latter two were postulated to be related to the novel taste-time relationship. Corroborative evidence for the hypothesis was found, which indicated that spicy (vs. salty) intake elicited significantly stronger anger toward and significantly greater approach-motivated perception of a rescheduled temporal event (Study 3). Taken together, the current findings demonstrate that spicy taste may play a role in people's perspectives on the movement of events in time and highlight the involved embodied interrelation between language, emotion, and cognition.

[The sound and musical preferences of tympanic chord]

The tympanic chord is a part of the 7th cranial nerve (facial nerve), from which it branches off, runs through the middle ear and then joins the lingual nerve, a part of the 5th cranial nerve (mandibular nerve/trigeminal nerve). Despite its course through the ear, the tympanic chord does not carry auditory fibers, but rather sensory and parasympathetic fibers to the front part of the tongue and to the salivary glands.The cranial nerves V and VII have a common phylogenetic origin, establishing a close relationship between auditory and gustative sense.In German language "Geschmack" means both gustative sense and the preference for different ways of thinking or styles in music, art or fashion. "Musikgeschmack" is the preference for special music styles or composers. "Musikgeschmack" therefore forms an interface between the anatomy of the tympanic chord and music preferences.The effect of parallel processing of music and taste is used, for example, in music therapy or as part of marketing strategies. But it could also be used to treat Covid-19 patients who suffer from a loss of sense of smell and taste. However, there are still no studies on this specific question.

Sensitive to music? Examining the crossmodal effect of audition on sweet taste sensitivity

Previous research has shown that music can influence taste perception. While most studies to date have focused on taste intensity ratings, less is known about the influence of musical stimuli on other parameters of taste function. In this within-subjects experiment (N = 73), we tested the effects of three sound conditions (High Sweetness soundtrack - HS; Low Sweetness soundtrack - LS; and Silence - S) on sweet taste sensitivity, namely, detection and recognition. Each participant tasted nine samples of sucrose solutions (from 0 g/L to 20 g/L) under each of the three sound conditions in counterbalanced order. We assessed the lower concentrations at which participants were able to detect (detection threshold) and correctly identify (recognition threshold) a taste sensation. Additionally, the intensity and hedonic ratings of samples above the recognition threshold (7.20 g/L) were analyzed. Affective variations (valence and arousal) in response to the sound conditions were also assessed. Although music did not lead to significant differences in mean detection and recognition thresholds, a larger proportion of sweet taste recognitions was observed at a near-threshold level (2.59 g/L) in the HS condition. The intensity and hedonic ratings of supra-threshold conditions were unaffected by the music condition. Significant differences in self-reported mood in response to the sound conditions were also observed. The present study suggests that the influence of music on the sweet taste perception of basic solutions may depend on the parameter under consideration.

Judging the emotional states of customer service staff in the workplace: A multimodal dataset analysis

Background

Emotions play a decisive and central role in the workplace, especially in the service-oriented enterprises. Due to the highly participatory and interactive nature of the service process, employees' emotions are usually highly volatile during the service delivery process, which can have a negative impact on business performance. Therefore, it is important to effectively judge the emotional states of customer service staff.

Methods

We collected data on real-life work situations of call center employees in a large company. Three consecutive studies were conducted: first, the emotional states of 29 customer service staff were videotaped by wide-angle cameras. In Study 1, we constructed scoring criteria and auxiliary tools of picture-type scales through a free association test. In Study 2, two groups of experts were invited to evaluate the emotional states of customer service staff. In Study 3, based on the results in Study 2 and a multimodal emotional recognition method, a multimodal dataset was constructed to explore how each modality conveys the emotions of customer service staff in workplace.

Results

Through the scoring by 2 groups of experts and 1 group of volunteers, we first developed a set of scoring criteria and picture-type scales with the combination of SAM scale for judging the emotional state of customer service staff. Then we constructed 99 (out of 297) sets of stable multimodal emotion datasets. Based on the comparison among the datasets, we found that voice conveys emotional valence in the workplace more significantly, and that facial expressions have more prominant connection with emotional arousal.

Conclusion

Theoretically, this study enriches the way in which emotion data is collected and can provide a basis for the subsequent development of multimodal emotional datasets. Practically, it can provide guidance for the effective judgment of employee emotions in the workplace.