Lessons craft chocolate can learn from a police lineup

Back in the 1990s, the police, and psychologists, discovered a profound, and confusing, problem with asking witnesses to write down what they remembered from a crime scene. They discovered that asking victims of a crime to describe the faces of criminals after they’d been assaulted, robbed, etc. made it FAR LESS LIKELY that the victim would, for example, be able to identify the criminal in a police lineup.

This discovery is known as ‘verbal overshadowing’ and was extensively researched by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler, and the concept was also extended from faces to voices, and even shapes and colours. It also led to the police using sketches, identikits, etc. rather than relying on verbal descriptions by witnesses of criminals. It also explains the importance, and impact, of specific ‘markers’ or characteristics in people’s faces, walks, movements, etc. used by the police to identify e.g., football hooligans.

In 1996 a couple of psychologists with an interest in wine; Joseph Melcher and Jonathan Schooler; decided to see if verbal overshadowing also applied to their favourite drink. Their findings not only confirmed verbal overshadowing as a challenge in wine tastings, but also suggested a number of powerful arguments for learning to savour.

As verbal shadowing of faces would suggest, when a wine drinker was asked to identify a wine they’d previously enjoyed ‘blind’ they often did far worse if they’d written down some notes rather than just relied on their unprompted memory. However, some wine drinkers who’d practised, and learnt about savouring wine, did far better when they could look at their tasting notes. And, even more intriguingly, even drinkers with little experience of either drinking or studying wine benefited from learning to savour.

So just as a little training, and a few hints, can make it far easier to pick out the criminal, a little practise and extra vocabulary can help identification and enjoyment of wine.

As far as we know, no-one has ever done for chocolate what Melcher and Schooler did for wine. So we’d like to try a little experiment to see if we can replicate their study and assess the results. We’re proposing to pilot this at the Chocolat Festival in Porto. And we’ve also a few suggestions on how you can experiment on this at home, as well as explaining a little more as to what verbal overshadowing involves.

Click here for tickets and info about Chocolat Festival in Porto

What is verbal overshadowing?

Wikipedia defines verbal overshadowing as “a phenomenon where giving a verbal description of sensory input impairs formation of memories of that input”. Unhelpfully, the description then becomes very technical, e.g., “Seminal work by Carmichael and collaborators (1932) demonstrated that when verbal labels are connected to non-verbal forms during an individual’s encoding process, it could potentially bias the way those forms are reproduced”.

This sort of jargon may explain why most of us have never heard of verbal overshadowing. But to appreciate its power, it’s worth describing Schooler and Engstler-Schooler’s 1990 study:

“…participants watched a video of a simulated robbery and were instructed to either verbally describe the robber or engage in a control task. Those who engaged in giving a verbal description were less likely to correctly identify the robber from a test lineup, compared to those who engaged in the control task. A larger effect was detected when the verbal description was provided 20, rather than 5, minutes after the video, and immediately before the test lineup“.

That is to say; most of us aren’t great at putting faces into words. And when we do, we can misremember with dangerous results.

At the same time, if you are a trained ‘people watcher’ and can note down distinguishing characteristics, ticks, movements etc. it’s extraordinary how people can identify people in a crowd. The police even have a special group they call “super recognisers” who, even with AI and CCTV, they still use to identify football hooligans etc.

Verbal overshadowing outside of criminal lineups

Lots of intriguing experiments outside of crimes and criminal lineups have been done to explain why we struggle to remember stuff even when we’ve tried to write stuff down. It’s not just faces. It’s also voices and music. And it’s even numbers.

…and also wine!

Back in 1996, Joseph M. Melcher and Jonathan W. Schooler, decided to see if verbal overshadowing applied to wine with the wonderfully named ‘The Misremembrance of Wines Past: Verbal and Perceptual Expertise Differentially Mediate Verbal Overshadowing of Taste Memory’.

The full text is available. But as they write so beautifully, I’ve tried to quote a few lines to summarise their hypothesis, experiment and findings.

Click here to read the full text

From the introduction

“Of all the sources of memory illusions, our own language may be the most insidious. We depend on language to represent our experiences faithfully so that we can communicate them to others and so that we can remember them ourselves. Generally, language serves language memory well. Verbal rehearsal and elaboration are among the most established techniques for enhancing memory. It is perhaps the very effectiveness of language as a memory enhancer that enables it to be such a potent source of memory illusions … perceptual memories are one domain where language often falls short. Despite their rich evocative quality, most of us experience a dearth of language when trying to describe memorable perceptions. We might say: ‘‘He was very handsome’’; ‘‘The soup was delicious’’; ‘‘The wine tasted exotic, but bitter“.

The hypothesis and methodology

Melcher and Schooler’s primary hypothesis was that “a perceptual memory can be disruptive when perceptual expertise exceeds verbal expertise”.  That is to say, you can perceive the difference but not explain it. You can register and remember what the criminal looked like, but can’t easily describe their face. You can enjoy the wine, but the description is (literally) on the tip of your tongue, and you can’t articulate it. And if you try to write down what you can’t articulate or describe, you use words that later mess up your ability to remember.

For their experiment, Melcher and Schooler picked out 107 people aged between 21 and 78, and split them into three groups:

1. Non red wine drinkers (novices) who had “little experience of either drinking or explaining wines“,
2. Wine drinkers who “have developed a palate for red wine” but “who do not know how to describe wines with much precision and lack verbal expertise“,
3. Wine experts “who have an … extensive vocabulary … dedicated to … detection and classification“.

Non red wine drinkers drank red wine less than once a month. Wine drinkers and wine experts drank relatively similar amounts; 7-10 times per month.

They then divided each category group into two groups, one of whom could write down their tasting notes as they tasted while the other group made no notes and did a crossword after tasting the wines.

Some of the results were to be expected. ‘Experts’, who could figure out how to describe what they were tasting, found their notes helpful and did well at identifying the wines blind. People who drink wine regularly, whether they were experts or drinkers, did far better at identifying wines than people who only drank occasionally. And, as verbal overshadowing would suggest, wine drinkers who “lacked verbal expertise” (i.e. non experts) were confused after having to describe wines, used vague descriptors and misremembered what they’d drunk.

One additional result in particular was surprising, but also very encouraging. When novices were given some pointers on how to describe what they liked and could taste in a wine, this HUGELY helped them identify the wines blind later. And presumably it helped them savour and enjoy the wines more too.

Lessons for craft chocolate …and an experiment

We’d like to carry out a similar experiment at our in-person tastings in October and November. We propose to work together and taste as a group a couple of craft chocolates, agreeing on some characteristics and features. For some other craft chocolates we won’t discuss, and we won’t allow any note-taking. Then we’ll do some blind tasting and judge the results. So please see here for some recently released new tastings we’ve just added (the original October and November are now sold out so we’ve added some more). Please also note; this experiment will be just one aspect of the tastings. We’ll also do the normal adventure of trying different beans, fermentations etc. and explore the history, health, and environmental importance of craft chocolate.

Click here for tickets to our London tastings

We’re also planning to explore verbal overshadowing on an even wider scale at the upcoming Chocolat Festival in Porto in October. We’ll be joined by great maker-experts like Mikkel Friis-Holm, Mike from Chocolarder, Deana from Tosier, Peggy and Patrick from Choco Del Sol. Plus we’ll be assisted by tasting experts like Peter McCombie (Master of Wine and IWC judging panelist), Martin Christie (International Chocolate Awards), Chantal Coady (Academy of Chocolate), and many more! So hope to see you there!

Click here for tickets and info about Chocolat Festival in Porto

And in the interim, keep savouring your craft chocolates, and try to articulate not just what you like, but the notes, textures, journeys and adventures that these bars take you on.

As ever, thanks for your support.

Keep savouring!

Spencer