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Are you better off ordering your favorite food off a menu or something you have never had? Rozin had suggested to me it might depend on where you want your pleasure to occur: before, during, or after the meal. “The anticipated pleasure is greater if it’s your favorite food. You’ve had it, you’re familiar with it, you know what it’s like. The experi

ecological valence theory—that might explain both the adult and the infant preferences. The theory is that we like the colors of the things we most like.

Liking is learning:

Third, they are often constructed.

“hedonic contrast”

we learn “flavor objects”—the “perceptual gestalt” of touch, taste, and smell in everything we eat.

Exposure to people, as much as food itself, influences our liking.

“mere exposure” effect: “Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.”

Maddeningly, however, tastes are rarely congenital: