Abstract
Previous research by Ahn, Ahnert, Bagrow, and Barabasi (2011) found that North American recipes tended to use ingredients with more similar flavor compounds, while East Asian recipes tended to use ingredients with more dissimilar flavor compounds. The current study sought to determine whether taste preferences predicted by Ahn et al. (2011)'s findings were related to cultural differences in dialectical reasoning style. To test this, researchers gave 63 European North Americans and 51 East Asians or Asian Americans a blind taste test of four pairs of ingredients that varied on the number of flavor compounds each ingredient pairing shared, and how common the ingredient pairings were in North American and East Asian recipe databases. The results showed that European North Americans gave higher liking ratings to the ingredient pairings with little overlap in flavor compounds compared to those with a higher degree of overlap; East Asians gave similar liking ratings to both similar and dissimilar ingredient pairings. However, East Asians' and North Americans' liking ratings were not correlated with any of the dialectical reasoning style questionnaires. Additionally, participants’ liking ratings showed that both North Americans and East Asians gave liking ratings in line with the number of flavor compounds shared between each ingredient pairings, but not how common the ingredient pairings were in North American and East Asian recipe databases. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings, and suggest the results be replicated in other testing locations. Although there could be a possible correlation between North Americans' and East Asians' self-construal and taste preferences, this was not found because the measure of self-construal used did not provide an in-depth analysis of the concept.