Expert and Peer Pressure in Food and Wine Tasting: Evidence from a Pilot Experiment

We investigate experimentally the role of experts and peer pressure on food and wine tasting, in order to assess whether individual blind tasting might be affected and biased by the judgements expressed either by peer reviewers or by experts. We design and run a four-stages experiment in which 60 non-expert consumers are assigned to either a food or a wine treatment and, for either treatment, to a variant in which evaluation are announced either by peers or by experts. We find that, while peer pressure plays some role in food tasting, experts' opinions are significant in wine tasting.