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SensoGram 26: Did You Get Your Pleasure Quota Today?
In an original research project, SensoMetrics asked N=370 Sydney respondents to rate the amount of pleasure they derived from several everyday substances - substances used as a break, a treat, or a reward during a normal day. (Only users of the product in question responded.)
As shown above, cigarettes, as rated by smokers, were perceived as the most pleasurable product; chocolate and coffee were also very well liked. One surprise, perhaps, was that beer was bottom of the heap. But this is resolved when the data are split out by gender: -
It was the women who dampened the overall score for beer. Yet we know from taste testing that female beer drinkers score beer at much the same level as do men. So why the disparity here? The most likely explanation is that men drink more beer than women, thus their rating has been enhanced by the memory of its pleasant alcoholic effect!
But the most astonishing feature of the research was yet to come. When we computed the overall mean pleasure score from various subgroups, we obtained the following:
At the end of the day, these subgroups - men/women, smokers/nonsmokers, younger/older - claimed to be deriving almost exactly the same total amount of pleasure from these substances, even though their scores for individual products varied. Thus, smokers really enjoyed cigarettes but derived less pleasure from chocolate and biscuits; older respondents obtained less enjoyment from chocolate but more from wine, and so on.
This inspired postulation of the `Pleasure Quota'; that is, that individuals may obtain a constant quota of pleasure from everyday substances, a quota which differs only in the means by which it is achieved.
This concept captured the imagination at the Rome meeting and warrants further research.
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