Imagine being hungry in a grocery store and looking for a snack. You have a choice between Gobo granola bars or Kipi granola bars. Which do you reach for to fill you up? If you’re like the participants in our new study, you probably said Gobo.

There are many factors that affect our impressions of foods. For example, people perceive products with duller packaging to be healthier than those with vivid colours. People also tend to assume that snacks in a glossy package are higher in fat.

Read more: When words look like their meaning, we process them faster, new research reveals

In our new study, we looked at how the sound of a snack’s name impacts these impressions. In particular, we looked at whether the sound of a snack name can lead to expectations that the food is heavier/lighter and more/less filling.

We found that people expected foods with a “large” name like Norgo to be heavier and more filling than foods with a “small” name like Iskee.

Some sounds feel smaller

Our study made use of an effect that is almost 100 years old: the “mil/mal effect.” This is the less well-known sibling of the “bouba/kiki effect” — the tendency to pair some sounds with round........

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