Creamy red and crunchy blue? How colour interacts with perceptions of texture

Abstract

This study explores the sensory-marketing effects of cross-modal interaction between vision and haptic perceptions of texture. Specifically, we show that moving up the colour spectrum from red to blue dampens the perception of particular types of food texture. Conceptually, we relate such cross-modal sensitivity with indicators of overall haptic predisposition for an individual in terms of Need for Touch (NFT) and Self-Orientation (SO). Our results show that the association between colour and texture interacts with the NFT and SO.