The second experiment was inspired by that most awkward situation at a dinner party, when we find the host’s food to be unpalatable but struggle to eat it anyway. Try as we might to disguise our feelings, we are sure that our distaste will be transmitted to everyone around us. But is our discomfort obvious? To test this scenario in a laboratory, the researchers asked a group of food tasters to take sips from fifteen small cups. Five of the cups contained a foul-tasting brine solution used to pickle vine leaves, while ten contained cherry-flavoured Kool-Aid. No matter what they drank, the participants were asked to mask what they were feeling as a camera recorded their reactions. The films would then be shown to ten observers, who had to determine whether they had enjoyed each drink or found it disgusting. Thanks to the illusion of transparency, the tasters had little faith in their ability to disguise their displeasure. On average, they estimated that around half of the observers would have been able to recognise the feelings behind their masked expressions, whereas the true fraction was around a third.
