es (Deroy and Valentin, 2011; Spence and Gallace, 2011; Spence, 2012; Spence and Ngo, 2012; Spence and Deroy, 2014). Given the profound cultural differences in terms of people’s food preferences and consumption behaviors (e.g., Kittler and Sucher, 2007), it would seem reasonable to expect that there would also be significant cross-cultural differences in the visual-taste/flavor associations they express (cf. Bremner et al., 2013). As a case in point, a growing number of studies have recently started to examine cross-cultural differences in the way in which people match gustatory with non-gustatory information, and investigated color–odor associations (e.g., Levitan et al., 2014), color–flavor associations (e.g., Shankar et al., 2010; Velasco et al., 2014; Wan et al., 2014, 2015), and shape-flavor associations (Bremner et al., 2013; Woods et al., 2013). For example, Western participants associate carbonated water with angular shapes, and still water with rounded shapes (Gallace et al., 2011; Ngo et al., 2012), whereas members of the Himba tribe from rural Namibia do not show any such effect (Bremner et al., 2013). Or, to take another example, when asked to match shapes with chocolate having 30, 70, or 90% cocoa content, Westerners tend to associate flavors that are more bitter with more angular shapes (Ngo et al., 2011), whereas the Himba showed the opposite pattern or results, aligning less bitter flavor with more angular shapes (Bremner et al., 2013).
However, a range of cross-cultural similarities have also been documented (e.g., Piqueras-Fiszman et al., 2012; Ngo et al., 2013; Wan et al., 2015). For example, Ngo et al. (2013) assessed crossmodal correspondences between the taste/flavor of fruit juices and various visual attributes in two different cultures. British and Colombian participants were found to associate sweeter fruit juices with rounder shapes while associating sourer-tasting fruit juices with more angular abstract shapes instead. It would seem likely that future research would reveal both culture-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, purpl