the chips in chocolate chip ice cream and say on the package,
“New! Bigger Chocolate Chips!” and charge five to ten cents
more, that seems honest and fair. But if you put your ice cream
in a round as opposed to a rectangular container and charge five
to ten cents more, that seems like you’re pulling the wool over
people’s eyes. If you think about it, though, there really isn’t
any practical difference between those two things. We are
willing to pay more for ice cream when it tastes better, and
putting ice cream in a round container convinces us it tastes
better just as surely as making the chips bigger in chocolate chip
ice cream does. Sure, we’re conscious of one improvement and
not conscious of the other, but why should that distinction
matter? Why should an ice cream company be able to profit
only from improvements that we are conscious of? You might
say, ‘Well, they’re going behind our back.’ But who is going
behind our back? The ice cream company? Or our own
unconscious?
Neither Masten nor Rhea believes that clever packaging
allows a company to put out a bad-tasting product. The taste of
the product itself matters a great deal. Their point is simply that
when we put something in our mouth and in that blink of an
eye decide whether it tastes good or not, we are reacting not