If music appears to express something," Igor Stravinsky once wrote, "this is an illusion and not a reality." Scientists at the Music Research Group at Britain's University of Leicester would beg to differ. They maintain that music conjures up images that can have a powerful, if subliminal, influence on our choice of products to buy and use.
To put their theory to the test, researchers took over the wine shelves in a local supermarket. They displayed four French and four German wines "matched for their price and dryness or sweetness," indicating the origin of each vintage with a French or German...