Do words evoke taste feelings? A comparison between French, American and Vietnamese students

French students (150), American students (150) and Vietnamese students (180 ) participated in two successive tests to study whether certain words would elicite taste evocations. The first test was a free association test: Subj ects had to write down on a sheet of paper what came spontaneously to their mind when reading a given word. The second test was a test of directed ass ociation: Subjects had to estimate numerically the association between a se ries of words and each of the four tastes: sweet, sour, salt and bitter. Th e results show considerable differences between the three groups of subject s, even though the general structural organization of the lour tastes is so mewhat similar for all groups. For example, the word strawberry is associat ed only very slightly with the taste sweet for French subjects whereas it i s associated very strongly with sweet for American subjects: it obtains a s core comparable with the word honey. For Vietnamese subjects, this word is also associated strongly with sweet, but even more with acid. These results can be explained by differences in both food behavior and life experience. The results also can explain why certain interactions between odors and ta stes appear in one culture but not in another.