Abstract Understanding the determinants of consumers’ preferences is crucial for successful product development. Although it is rarely considered, perceived complexity is believed to be one important intrinsic product factor that may influence preference development (Levy, MacRae, & Koster, 2006). Studies on perceived complexity are mostly based on the Theory of Arousal (Berlyne, 1971) that asserts that the influence of complexity on consumers’ preferences can be represented as an inverted U-curve. This article reviews the scientific literature on complexity in the field of food and beverages. A literature search was carried out on online catalogues using the search terms ‘complexity’ and ‘preference’ or ‘hedonic’ or ’liking’. Fifty five relevant articles have been selected and analysed for the ways authors define, manage and measure complexity. Fourteen of these articles addressed the link between complexity and hedonic response. One major result is that there is no consensus regarding the definition of complexity. In addition to physical complexity of products, definitions of perceived complexity can be divided into three categories: sensory, cognitive and emotional. A direct consequence of the diversity of the definitions is that there are many different ways to measure complexity, including sensory or instrumental methods. In order to generate different levels of complexity, authors play with the number of food components (ingredients, chunks, flavour notes). Besides, complexity is always studied for one sensory modality only (e.g. either aspect or texture or smell or taste). Overall, very little attention is paid to the temporal dimension of sensory complexity. Eventually, only one paper out of 14 found an inverted U-curve relationship between complexity and hedonic response as suggested by Berlyne’s theory.

中文翻译：

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感官复杂性及其对快感反应的影响：对食品和饮料应用的系统评价

摘要 了解消费者偏好的决定因素对于成功的产品开发至关重要。尽管很少考虑，但感知复杂性被认为是可能影响偏好发展的一个重要的内在产品因素（Levy、MacRae 和 Koster，2006 年）。对感知复杂性的研究大多基于唤醒理论（Berlyne，1971），该理论断言复杂性对消费者偏好的影响可以表示为倒 U 型曲线。本文回顾了有关食品和饮料领域复杂性的科学文献。使用搜索词“复杂性”和“偏好”或“享乐”或“喜欢”对在线目录进行文献搜索。根据作者定义的方式，选择并分析了 55 篇相关文章，管理和衡量复杂性。其中 14 篇文章讨论了复杂性和享乐反应之间的联系。一个主要的结果是对于复杂性的定义没有达成共识。除了产品的物理复杂性，感知复杂性的定义可以分为三类：感官、认知和情感。定义多样性的一个直接结果是有许多不同的方法来衡量复杂性，包括感官或仪器方法。为了产生不同程度的复杂性，作者使用了食物成分（成分、块、风味特征）的数量。此外，复杂性总是仅针对一种感官方式进行研究（例如，方面或质地或气味或味道）。全面的，很少关注感官复杂性的时间维度。最终，14 篇论文中只有一篇发现了复杂性和享乐反应之间的倒 U 型曲线关系，正如 Berlyne 的理论所暗示的那样。