For years, beer drinkers have had to pretend to enjoy dodgy-tasting beer served up by hipster breweries and enthusiastic home-brewers.
Now researchers in Japan say two different facial expressions can truly reveal whether or not we enjoyed a beer immediately after trying it.
In experiments, the scientists used facial recognition technology to scan people’s facial expressions to reveal their true beer preferences.
‘Lip suck’, where the lips are drawn inwards as if we’re saying ‘mmmmm’, indicate that we enjoy a beverage, the experts claim.
Conversely, ‘lip press’, where the lips are pressed down on top of each other, reveals that we actually thought a beer tasted horrible.
Lip suck is where the lips are drawn inwards, as if we’re saying ‘mmmmm’. It suggests we enjoyed the taste of a beer. Lip press is when we’re pressing our lips together, down on top of each other rather than inwards. It suggests we didn’t enjoy a beer
The research was conducted by four scientists at Brewing Science Laboratories, a research lab belonging to brewing giant Asahi in Ibaraki, Japan.
According to the team, accurately determining whether or not a taster likes a beverage before it goes to market is hugely important.
This should be done by analysing a taster’s facial expressions, rather than asking them whether they enjoyed it or not, as they may not tell the truth.
‘Relying solely on explicit liking could lead to a misunderstanding of consumers’ real intentions, ultimately resulting in the failure of a new product after its launch on the market,’ the team say in their paper.
‘Analysing facial expressions as an implicit measurement may provide a better understanding of consumers’ preferences at a subconscious level by capturing their objective responses to products after tasting.’
For the study, the team recruited a total of 151 Japanese beer consumers who tasted three different beer samples.
Fifty of the participants were employees at Asahi, while the remaining 101 participants were members of the public from in and around Tokyo.
All participants involved in the experiments drank beer at least once a week, but were not trained for beer evaluations.
Researchers presented volunteers with small tasters of three different pilsner beers (stock image)
Researchers used three commercial beer samples marketed in Japan, all of which were classified as ‘pilsner-type’ (although they did not disclose the specific brands).
As asking the participants about whether they liked each beer could lead to inaccurate responses, each participant was instead asked, ‘How many cans of each product out of 10 cans would you like to take home?’ after tasting all three beers.
The beer that they opted to take home in the largest quantity would be the one they liked the most, the researchers figured.
The participants were secretly video-recorded throughout the taste tests, and 10 seconds of video were extracted to analyse facial expressions during the tasting.
The software detected multiple facial expressions, but only two – ‘lip suck’ and ‘lip press’ – had correlations with beer choices.
‘Lip suck’ before swallowing had a negative correlation with the number of beer choices, while ‘lip press’ after swallowing had a positive correlation to the number of beer choices.
Some of the other expressions included ‘eye closure’, ‘brow raise’, ‘mouth open’, ‘lip stretch’ and ‘chin raise’.
Overall, the team claim that their results could help identify the ‘hidden’ voice of volunteers during taste tests of food and drink products before they come to market.
Using a similar method to theirs could combat a major problem in the food and drink industry – why beers that are liked in consumer research are not necessarily the ones that sell well upon release, and vice versa.
‘The results suggested that measuring facial expressions during beer tasting is a feasible method that provides adequate data for effective analysis,’ the team conclude.
The study has been published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk