为什么星巴克总用白杯子装咖啡?这是个心理学花招

If part of your morning routine involves coffee, it's likely that you have a very specific ritual about which cups you use.

如果你早上习惯喝咖啡，那可能在挑选杯子时会很讲究。

An Australian scientist has taken it upon himself to find out whether there's any scientific basis for thinking that taste is influenced by cup color—and it turns out, the color of your cup plays a big role in how you think your coffee tastes.

一位澳大利亚科学家亲自研究认为咖啡杯颜色会影响味道的想法是否有科学依据，结果发现杯子颜色对味道的判断有很大影响。

A study called Does the colour of the mug influence the taste of the coffee?, published in the journal Flavour, looks at how color influences the taste of coffee.

《Flavour》杂志上发表的名为“杯子颜色会影响咖啡味道吗？”的研究研究的是颜色是如何对咖啡味道产生影响的。

According to the lead author, Federation University Australia's George Van Doorn, the experiment was inspired by a conversation with a barista who "reported that when coffee is consumed from a white, ceramic mug, it tastes more bitter than when drunk from a clear, glass mug instead."

该研究的第一作者澳大利亚联邦大学的George Van Doorn说这个实验的灵感来源于一次和咖啡师的对话，那位咖啡师“说用白色陶瓷杯装的咖啡尝起来比透明玻璃杯里的咖啡更苦。”

Van Doorn decided to find out whether there was any truth to the barista's claim—and in the paper, shows that there is.

Van Doorn决定要弄清楚这位咖啡师的说法是否属实，而且报告中显示的确是这样。

The group tested three colors of mug: White, blue, and clear.

研究团队测试了3种咖啡杯颜色：白色、蓝色和透明。

They gave participants—the study had a small sample size of 36 drinkers—a café latté served in each color of cup, and asked them to rate it based on everything from intensity and sweetness to aroma, bitterness, and quality.

这项研究的样本量很小，只有36名常喝咖啡的人，他们在每个颜色的杯里都装上拿铁咖啡，分给受试者，然后让他们依据浓度、甜度、香味、苦味和品质打分。

The color of the cup ended up changing their perceptions of only two of those metrics: Intensity and sweetness.

杯子的颜色只影响他们对两个指标的评分：浓度和甜度。

When subjects drank their latté from a white cup, they rated it significantly more intense than the latté in a clear cup.

受试者喝白色杯子里的拿铁时，他们认为咖啡的浓度明显高于透明杯子里的拿铁。

Why? Well, Van Doorn gives us a few hypotheses. For example, he points to other flavor studies that show how contrast is a crucial determining factor in how we perceive taste.

为什么呢？Van Doorn给出了几种假设，比如，他说其他的口味研究表明，颜色反差是我们感知味道的决定性因素。

One prior study found that red strawberry mousse served on a white plate tasted 15 percent more intense than mousse served on a black plate, for example.

比如此前的一项研究发现白色盘子上的红草莓慕斯比黑色盘子装的慕斯味道要浓15%。

So for brown coffee, a white cup ups the contrast and thus ups our perceived intensity levels, too.

所以白色杯子与咖啡的颜色反差更大，我们感受到的浓度水平也就更高。