A Comparative Study on Facially Expressed Emotions in Response to Basic Tastes

• Published in: Chemosensory perception Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 1 - 9
• Main Authors: Bredie, Wender L. P., Tan, Hui Shan Grace, Wendin, Karin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-03-2014; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Basic Medicine; Basic taste; Bitter taste; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Clinical Nutrition; Comparative studies; Emotion; Face; Facial expression; Food Science; Fysiologi; Medical and Health Sciences; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper; Neurosciences; Nonverbal communication; Physiology; Sensory perception; Taste; Basic taste; Emotion; Sensory perception; Facial expression
• ISSN: 1936-5802; 1936-5810; 1936-5810
• DOI: 10.1007/s12078-014-9163-6

Facially expressed emotions play a role in communication between individuals. They form another means of expressing oneself besides verbal expressions or self-reporting of feelings and perceptions on psychometric scales and are implicit in nature. This study aimed to evaluate the extent and specificity of evoking facial expressed emotions by basic tastes and to evaluate if facially expressed emotions provide additional information to explicit measures. The emotions were characterised upon tasting the five basic tastes in aqueous solutions at three different concentrations levels. The sensory and emotional responses reported were obtained from a 21-membered taste panel. Facial reactions and facially expressed emotions depended on the taste quality and taste intensity. However, the facially expressed emotions were generally weak even for the relatively strong taste intensities. Bitter (caffeine), sour (citric acid) and salty (sodium chloride) lead to clear disgust and surprise responses, whereas, sweet (sucrose) and umami (glutamic acid monosodium salt) taste gave weakly noticeable facially expressed emotions. Although correlations between the expressed emotions and hedonic responses were observed, the affective experience had a limited predictive ability for the facially expressed emotion at the individual level. In conclusion, psychometric rating of the hedonic response is easier to assess than facially expressed emotions although it may not completely represent the dimensions of the emotional experience.