Influence of the crossmodal congruency between color and flavor on product evaluations: Evidence from behavioral and oscillatory brain responses

Abstract People often associate features or stimuli across senses, and these crossmodal correspondences also function as criteria for judging whether a pair of features or stimuli is crossmodally congruent or incongruent. We conducted two studies to examine whether the crossmodal congruency between a drink color and a flavor could also elicit more positive ratings of this drink. In Study 1, the experimental task was to simultaneously view a photo of a colored drink and to taste a beverage whose flavor was either congruent or incongruent with the color. Consequently, the color-flavor congruent drinks received more positive ratings than the color-flavor incongruent ones. In Study 2, we conducted an EEG experiment to investigate both behavioral and oscillatory brain responses to the crossmodal congruency between the successively presented color and flavor. The results of subjective ratings did not reveal any significant difference between the color-flavor congruent and incongruent stimuli. However, the time-frequency analyses on the EEG data revealed that rating the color-flavor incongruent beverages elicited greater alpha band power in the parietal region, compared to the color-flavor congruent stimuli. Collectively, these findings revealed the influence of color-flavor congruency on the subjective ratings of beverages, and demonstrated how this effect was modulated by the temporal synchrony of the color and flavor cues.