The cross‐modal effect of color and roughness on the perception of spiciness

Abstract This study focuses on the cross‐modal correspondence of perception of spiciness produced by the two attributes of color saturation and roughness of hot sauce. There are four experiments in total: Experiment 1 investigated whether red hot sauce generates the strongest expected spiciness after expanding the color selection; Experiment 2 considers the effects of both hot sauce color saturation and roughness attributes on expected spiciness; Experiment 3 explored how different information processing channels affect expected spiciness; and Experiment 4 investigated whether saturation and roughness further affect the actual perceived spiciness and how different information processing channels affect actual spiciness. Results showed that after selecting seven colors, red hot sauce still generates the strongest expected spiciness. Higher saturation of hot sauce color and roughness of the sauce also lead to stronger, expected spiciness. In addition, different processing channels had different effects on saturation and roughness. In expected spiciness, visual processing is an important boundary condition for both attributes, leading to higher expected spiciness. However, in actual perceived spiciness, visual processing is an important boundary condition that leads to higher actual perceived spiciness, though roughness does not have this effect. Practical Applications Hot sauce is a common condiment, widely used in food preparation around the world. This study offers important ideas for product and package design of spicy foods, showing how the product itself and its package design can affect consumers' expected and actual perceived spiciness. Manufacturers of spicy food, restaurants, and supermarkets can use these ideas to differentiate saturation, roughness, and package size in product and package design to produce different expected and actual perceived spiciness cross‐modal correspondences to promote sales.