Friday Morning Worries

[coffeeseraph]

For the last couple days, the hallway outside my office at work has smelled like pizza. It has also had cardboard boxes stacked in it. I commented on this to my coworker, who agreed. "Yeah!" she said. And, "I keep saying that, but everyone else thinks I'm crazy

Comments

[inoubliable]

Perhaps you could conduct an experiment with 3 conditions:
1 pepperoni pizza eaten from a cardboard box
1 pepperoni pizza in an establishment that also provides pizza in cardboard boxes
1 pepperoni pizza in an establishment that does not provide pizza in cardboard boxes

Then you could test whether direct contact with cardboard and/or presence of cardboard in the environment alter the taste on a multidimensional rating scale. You would need several raters.

You might run into some complications, like the fact that establishments that do not provide pizza in cardboard boxes are likely to use higher-quality ingredients and thus to taste better. But with careful selection of experimental materials this might be avoided.