Eating with your eyes: effect of appearance on expectations of liking

It was hypothesised that consumers' expectations of liking for a food would be affected by its appearance both when raw and when cooked and that the impact of these expectations on actual liking for the product after eating would vary with consumer awareness of internal body states (private body consciousness). We found that consumers' expectations of liking for the food generated by the appearance of the cooked product was related to expectation of liking from viewing the raw product. Under some conditions, consumers liked a food less after consumption if a raw product that generated low expectation of liking had been presented beforehand. There was no evidence that private body consciousness modified the consumers' susceptibility to expectation effects. It was concluded that expectations of liking for a food generated by appearance both when raw and cooked influenced final evaluation of the product during consumption. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.