How Expectations Bias Wine Taste - Leonard Mlodinow

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/06/01/The_Drunkards_Walk_Leonard_Mlodinow

Best-selling author and physicist Leonard Mlodinow discusses how the power of expectation applies to wine. Mlodinow claims that red dye can deceive even the most experienced connoisseur, and a false $10 price tag on a $90 bottle of wine can manipulate a test subject's reaction.

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From economic disaster to Supreme Court rulings, pure randomness may explain life's outcomes more than we realize. Mlodinow proposes that we tend to overestimate the control we have over our destinies. The best-selling author explains how a better understanding of statistics might bring hope to a nation facing an onslaught of misfortune. - Commonwealth Club of California

Leonard Mlodinow was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1954. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1976 with a double major in math and physics, and a Masters degree in physics. In 1981, he received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley.

After graduating, Mlodinow joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, and then became an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, Germany.

In 1985, Mlodinow moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. Over the next several years, he wrote for television series such as Hunter, MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the comedy series Night Court.

In 1993, Mlodinow became producer, executive producer and designer of several award-winning video games created in conjunction with Stephen Spielberg, Robin Williams, and the Walt Disney Company. Among the awards won by his games are the Consumer Electronics Software Showcase Award, Home PC Magazine Editor's Choice Award, and the National Association of Parenting Publications Gold Medal (twice). Between 1997 and 2003, Mlodinow was vice president for software development and then vice president and publisher for math education at Scholastic Inc.

As head of Scholastic software, Mlodinow created a children's games division and built it into one of the top five in the United States. While at Scholastic, he began to write popular science books, which by now have appeared in 25 languages.

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[DerrenBrown100]

This is the guy who made Deepak Chopra look like an ass.

[plimbuff]

@PlateauEast, you are misunderstanding. Nothing you've said disproves the experiment.

The MRI doesn't measure "taste", it measures enjoyment.

The test proved that people consitently enjoyed the exact same bottle of wine more simply because it it was priced higher.

[Lupitamihita]

Yay, two buck chuck! Go Mlodinow. Does this mean I need to go to wine tastings with a blindfold?

[NikkoDusseldorf]

Wow very nice video m are you coming to PROWINE 2011 in Germany , dusseldorf is the city to be

[plimbuff]

@PlateauEast, it wasn't dyed to look like red wine. It was dyed to look like Rose'.

Sorry, but the test proves that experts rated the SAME wine as sweeter, simply because it LOOKED like Rose'.

lol They must have been so embarresed.

Also,

You are EXACTLY the kind of person that will enjoy a twenty dollar bottle more, simply because it has a fake 100 dollar price tag on it. We ALL are. It's called basic psychology.

Just take a basic psychology class. I can also recommend some text books.

[PlateauEast]

@plimbuff even if it were experts being tested, it still proves nothing... the test itself misses the point completely. if the wine is red, you judge based on the fact that it's red wine. and shows what you know! being that red wine is not sweeter than white. if it is a sweet white wine and they put red food colouring in it, it seems logical that the wine experts would discuss the sweet quality of the wine. you know nothing about wine, and clearly neither does that guy speaking in this vid

[plimbuff]

@PlateauEast , it wasn't just students.

Wine EXPERTS were tested too. They rated the same white wine as being sweeter simply because it had red food coloring in it, making it rose' colered.

Do you really think wine experts can't be fooled?

If you do, you really need to take psychology 1A.

[PlateauEast]

@plimbuff i'm not trying to disprove the experiment, but i am pointing out that the experiment itself is pointless. he could have been talking about chocolate - expensive or not. oh wait... it's easy to discern the differences in quality in chocolate. it's not as easy with wine. there is a lot to know. test some dumb ass university students as they did proves nothing but that the students were ignorant about wine. anyone who knows, knows that price never tells the whole story.

[franksvenatra]

Uh, no it doesn't. Maybe you *expected* it to :) But it doesn't.

[fatmanprime]

Perhaps, but I am against ripping people off for placebos.