specific and universally shared correspondences, but there is, undoubtedly, a need to understand and define the extent to which correspondences are shared (or not) across cultures.
Importantly, though, none of the above-mentioned studies has thoroughly examined cross-cultural differences in the crossmodal associations between visual features, such as color, shape, and texture1 and taste terms, such as bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami2. In the present study, participants performed a color-taste matching task, a shape-taste matching task, and a texture-matching task, which was similar to the matching task introduced by O’Mahony (1983). He had his participants match the four basic taste terms (bitter, salty, sour, and sweet) with 12 colors (black, blue, brown, gold, green, gray, orange, red, silver, violet, white, and yellow), 7 days of the week, and seven states of the USA. As summarized in Table 1, the results revealed some crossmodal associations between red and sweet, yellow and sour, white and salty, as well as green/black and bitter.
TABLE 1. The color-taste associations observed in different studies, for the commonly tested colors.
In related research, Tomasik-Krótki and Strojny (2008) had their participants link the five basic taste terms, including umami with a selection of seven colors (blue, green, greenish blue, orange, red, violet, and yellow). As summarized in Table 1, the results revealed some crossmodal associations between red/orange and sweet, yellow/green with sour, blue with salty, and violet with bitter/umami. Interestingly, there is some consistency between the results of these two studies (red-sweet and yellow-sour associations, for example), but also discrepancies, such as the specific taste that was associated with color blue and green.
By contrast, Koch and Koch (2003) used a different task in order to examine the crossmodal correspondences between the four basic tastes (as well as four other tastes associated with soft drinks) and eight colors (black, blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow). They had their participants rate the degree at which a given color is related to a certain color on the 10-point scale, with higher scores indicating positive associations and lower scores indicating negative associations. As summarized in Table 1, the results revealed crossmodal associations between red/orange and sweet, green/yellow and sour, as well as white and salty.
Despite Tomasik-Krótki and Strojny’s (2008) study not addressing cross-cultural differences, it should be noted that their participants came from more than a dozen countries and regions from all over the world. By contrast, all of the participants in O’Mahony’s (1983) as well as Koch and Koch’s (2003) studies were students of major universities in the USA (mostly likely the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, namely WEIRD; Henrich et al., 2010). Therefore, it is possible that the discrepancy between the results of the three studies might be due to the difference in the cultural background of the participants who were tested.
In the present study, we attempted to address these important questions by testing participants from mainland China, India, Malaysia, and the USA. These particular countries were chosen for the following reasons: The USA is one of the most often mentioned countries when it comes to representing “Western culture” in the field of Cultural Psychology, not to mention standard psychological research (Henrich et al., 2010). By contrast, China, India, and Malaysia are all Asian countries, but they exhibit some dramatic differences in terms of their food culture (e.g., Kittler and Sucher, 2007) which might lead to differences in terms of crossmodal associations between visual attributes and taste/flavor.
Materials and Methods
A total of 452 participants took part in this study. 428 of them came from four separate populations, including 144 from mainland China (19.8 ± 1.5 years, ranging from 18 to 30 years; 52 females), 113 from India (31.4 ± 9.4 years, ranging from 19 to 66 years; 46 females