Why Valentine’s Day Makes Roses and Chocolate More Appealing

We tend to think of our likes and dislikes as stable. For example, you either like chocolate or you don’t. You either find roses romantic or cliché. But what if your feelings about them subtly shift depending on what’s happening in our cultural environment?

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, many of us start thinking about classic symbols of love (e.g., roses, chocolate, candlelit dinners). But do holidays actually change how we perceive these everyday objects? Research with a large sample of American adults suggests they do. As Valentine’s Day approaches, people judge roses and chocolates more positively than they do at other times of the month, even when no one mentions the holiday at all.

In this post, we’ll explore what this study found and what it reveals about how cultural events shape our attitudes in ways we may not even notice.

Valentine’s Day in the U.S.

Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest consumer holidays in the United States. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent an estimated $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day last year. The most common gifts? Candy (56%) and flowers (40%). Hundreds of millions of roses are prepared and sold, and over half of Americans purchase chocolate or other sweets.

Over time, these items have become more than just products. They’ve become symbols. Roses signal romance. Chocolate signals indulgence and affection. They’re woven into the cultural script of how love is expressed on this particular day.

Cultural Priming and Valentine’s Day

Psychologists have long studied priming, or the idea that exposure to certain cues can make related thoughts and feelings more accessible in our minds. Most priming research happens in laboratories, where researchers deliberately expose participants to specific words, images, or ideas to see how it affects subsequent judgments.

What’s striking about this study is that no one had to say “Valentine’s Day.” The calendar itself did the work.

The researchers proposed that holidays can function as naturally occurring cultural primes. As Valentine’s Day draws closer, culturally shared associations (e.g., love, romance, gift-giving) become more salient. Those associations can then spill over into how we evaluate objects that are strongly linked to the holiday.

In other words, roses and chocolate may feel more appealing not because they’ve changed, but because the cultural moment around them has.

Evaluations of Chocolate and Roses

In this study, participants were shown three images: red roses, a box of chocolates, and an advertisement for an online dating product. The dating app served as a comparison object — something related to love and connection, but not necessarily a classic Valentine’s Day symbol. Participants then rated how much they liked each image on a scale from “not at all” to “extremely.” Importantly, the holiday was never mentioned. Researchers simply collected responses on different days throughout February.

The key finding was that ratings for roses and chocolates became more positive as Valentine’s Day approached. The shift wasn’t dramatic, but it was consistent and statistically reliable.

Women tended to rate roses and chocolates more positively overall than men. However, the “Valentine’s Day effect” appeared across genders and relationship statuses. Even people who were single or not seeking a romantic relationship showed the same upward shift in positivity.

Interestingly, the dating app did not show the same pattern. This suggests that the effect wasn’t just about “thinking about love” in general. It was specific to objects that function as culturally iconic Valentine’s Day symbols.

How Does Culture Impact Our Perceptions?

This research highlights something important: our attitudes aren’t as fixed as we might assume. They’re responsive to context. They move alongside our culture. As Valentine’s Day draws near, roses and chocolate become more culturally relevant. That increased relevance appears to move evaluations in a more positive direction, even without conscious awareness of the holiday’s influence.

The authors suggest that this reflects culturally shared associations, not just personal memories. We don’t have to have had a perfect Valentine’s Day in the past for the cultural script to shape our judgments. Simply living in a society where roses and chocolate symbolize romance may be enough.

If a simple shift in the calendar can make certain objects seem more appealing, it raises a broader question: how many of our personal preferences are just echoing what our culture tells us we should want at a certain time?

This isn’t just about flowers and candy, either. Do cards, jewelry, or lingerie also get a perceptual boost as February 14th approaches? Expanding the scope, how do wedding season, Pride Month, or the winter holidays shift how we evaluate symbols tied to those events?

Cultural moments don’t just influence what we buy. They may subtly shape how we feel. And that influence might be happening far more often than we realize.

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Header image made in Canva; Graph from National Research Federation