SLiM: Coke Isn't Always It...

You may think you are in charge of your senses. But in truth, you aren’t (sometimes). One of my favorite things to learn about is optical illusions. (If you want to learn about them too, or just see them, I’d recommend any one of Al Seckel’s fantastic books about optical illusions.) Your sense of smell is easily influenced by what you think you are smelling. By the way, do you smell something burning? I do. Just joking. But of all of your sense illusions, my favorites are taste illusions.

Once, a group of curious scientists conducted an experiment. They got permission from the Coca-Cola ® Company to re-label some Coke® under an imitation brand name (for example, Super Cola). They slashed off about ¼ of the price, and to be perfectly fair, they gave free samples to random people. 100% of the people said they liked Coca-Cola® better than Super Cola (even though they were the exact same thing). Super Cola did not sell very well.

This proves a point. We humans are heavily influenced by what our senses think they will be getting. This automatically makes us biased judges when trying to accept new foods. The only exceptions to this are if you don’t know which is which or if the imitation is really a fake, and it tastes significantly worse.

Until one of senses tricks me into doing something crazy, I’m just going to sit back and watch the tricks they play.