People enjoy wine more if they believe it costs more, according to a California Institute of Technology experiment that was widely reported today. The BBC<\/a> put this politely as having shown that people enjoyed the supposedly more expensive wine more.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t just due to people pretending to have a more sophisticated palate, either, as it was observed on brain scans that “pleasure centres” in the brain were more activated.<\/p>\n

If the pop science reports are right, this was a very elegant experiment, so simple and easy to repeat, but suggesting so many wider avenues for investigation beyond the taste of wines..<\/p>\n

It’s an illuminating reminder that so many of our pleasures are experienced only because of the value that others put on things.\u00a0 There is no simple nature-culture divide. We perceive what other people have allowed us to perceive.\u00a0 We value things that we are led to see as valuable – obviously making us suckers for advertising, as well as eager consumers of a whole range of cultural fables and moral values.\u00a0 Social values are somehow integrated into our biology.<\/p>\n