Sounds perhaps self evident to you and me. A scientific study at the California Institute of Technology designed an experiment where the same wine was served to a tasting panel and sometimes they were told it was cheap and sometimes that it was an expensive wine. The same wine was considered much better when the tasters had been told it was expensive. And it was not simply a question of them saying so.
Magnetic resonance scans of the brain activity of the subjects showed that they actually perceived the wine as better.
(On the other hand, is that so surprising? Did they ever hear about the placebo effect?)
