Does It Tastes Better If It Cost More?

From NOW I KNOW - 

You Can Taste the Price

The hamburger pictured above is from a fancy restaurant. It costs $17. And it probably tastes good. No, it has to -- who would pay $17 for a burger and fries which didn't? No one, at least not twice.

That makes sense: in order to stay in business with an expensive menu, whatever your selling better make for a good dining experience. But at some point, our palates can't really discern between foods. When that happens, other signals take over. And at times, those signals can be so powerful that it overwhelms the rest of the experience. For example, would the same burger and fries above taste as good if it cost, say, $4? Maybe not.

In the fall of 2014, the Journal of Sensory Studies published a paper which investigated the effect on a meal's price on a diner's experience, and specifically, on how the diners rated their meals. The researchers teamed up with an of all-you-can-eat buffet Italian buffet which offered unlimited pizza to its customers, and invited a bunch of people -- 139, to be exact -- to partake in a chow down. Afterward, each of the 139 customers was asked to rate their experience. There was only one wrinkle: some of the customers paid $4 for the privilege while others paid $8. And no, the former group didn't know that they were getting a 50%-off deal. (Similarly, the latter didn't know that they were paying twice as much as the other group.)

So, who liked their meal more? The ones who paid double, per the Atlantic: "Those who paid $8 rated the pizza 11 percent tastier than those who paid $4. Moreover, the latter group suffered from greater diminishing returns—each additional slice of pizza tasted worse than that of the $8 group." Yes, even though they paid twice as more for the exact same product, the $8 group had a better time -- and thought they got a better deal, even though objectively, it wasn't. 

What's going on here? In a press release about the study, one of the authors of the paper, a Cornell professor named Dr. David Just, explained that, basically, a quality experience at a $4 all-you-can-eat pizzafest is simply too good to be true: "People set their expectation of taste partially based on the price -- and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I didn't pay much it can't be that good." 

So that $17 burger? It may taste good because of its high quality ingredients, a superior recipe, and better preparation than a $5 burger at a less fancy joint. Or maybe you've just convinced yourself that it does because hey, you paid $17 for it, and you had to have gotten your money's worth... right? 

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