Show me the color in your mind: A study of color-flavor associations in virtual reality

Abstract We conducted a virtual reality (VR) study to examine the color that first came to a person’s mind when he or she was drinking tea. The participants were asked to drink Chinese green or red tea without any visual cues, and then to show the first color in their mind on a circle or a cup of tea in VR. The results revealed that they were able to detect the difference in the bitterness and astringency of the two types of tea. Despite variations in the specific colors chosen by different individuals, their color responses for Chinese green tea were more greenish than those for Chinese red tea, thus indicative of some associations between the green–red component of color and the bitterness and astringency. Moreover, the results also revealed that the color responses made on the virtual tea were more similar to the actual color of tea beverages than those made on the virtual circle, suggesting that the participants may rely on a concrete object to exemplify a given flavor they experienced without visual cues. These results provide novel findings about color-flavor associations for complicated and subtle flavors, and shed some light on how to modulate the participants’ color-flavor associations via modifying the food or drink that they bring up to their mind to exemplify a certain flavor.