Hot sauce taste test reveals how expectations shape pleasure and pain

Anticipating pleasure or pain before tasting hot sauce appears to influence how the brain responds to the spicy flavour.

“This has broader implications beyond spicy food,” says Yi Luo at East China Normal University. “Understanding how positive and negative expectations influence perception can inform approaches in medicine, such as enhancing placebo effects in treatments.”

Luo and her colleagues recruited 47 volunteers – roughly half liked spicy foods and half didn’t – to receive squirts…