Your brain thinks wine tastes better when it costs more

Next time you drink wine, try ignoring the price tag.

By Shivali Best

Our brains are tricked into thinking a bottle of wine tastes better if we believe it is expensive.

A new study has found that the same wine tastes better to people when they think it has a higher price tag, the Daily Mail reports.

The researchers hope their findings will shed light on the placebo effect - a marketing tactic often used to coerce people into buying more expensive goods.

Researchers from the INSEAD Business School and the University of Bonn looked at how different prices are translated into taste experiences in the brain, even if the wine tastes the same.

The study involved 30 participants - 15 women and 15 men, with an average age of 30.
The participants lay in an MRI scanner while tasting various wines, allowing brain activity to be recorded.

A price for a wine was shown, before around one millilitre was given to the participant via a tube in their mouths.

The participants were then asked to rate how good the wine tasted on a nine-point scale.
Their mouths were rinsed with a neutral liquid and the next identical wine sample was given for tasting - but at a different price.

Professor Bernd Weber, lead author of the study, said: 'The marketing placebo effect has its limits: If, for example, a very low-quality wine is offered for €100 (NZ $160), the effect would predictably be absent."

Instead, the researchers carried out the tests using an average to good quality red wine with a retail bottle prize of €12 ($20).

The price of this wine was shown randomly as €3 ($5), €6 ($10) and €18 ($30).

And to make the study as realistic as possible, the participants were given €45 ($70) of initial credit.

For some of the tastings, the displayed sum was deducted from this account.

Professor Hilke Plassmann, who also worked on the study, said: "As expected, the subjects stated that the wine with the higher price tasted better than an apparently cheaper one.

"However, it was not important whether the participants also had to pay for the wine or whether they were given it for free."

The brain scans from the MRI also confirmed that identical wine tasted better when the participants believed it was more expensive.

When the prices were higher, the researchers found that the medial pre-frontal cortex and ventral striatum - areas of the brain associated with reward and motivation - were activated.

Professor Weber explained: "The reward and motivation system is activated more significantly with higher prices and apparently increases the taste experience in this way."

Ultimately, the reward and motivation system tricks our brain into thinking the wine tastes nicer.

When prices are higher, it leads us to believe that a taste is present that is not only driven by the wine itself, because the products were identical in all of the tastings.

Professor Weber added: "The exciting question is now whether it is possible to train the reward system to make it less receptive to such placebo marketing effects."