People enjoying black coffee, beer or gin and tonic - bitter drinks in general - may actually turn out to be as bitter and as nasty as their preferred drinks.
In an unusually choice of topic, psychology researchers from the University of Innsbruck, Austria come to a startling conclusion - people who prefer bitter tastes such as beer or black coffee tend to have a malevolent personality as well, according to an article by Olivia French for Liquor.com.
Christina Sagioglou, the study's author together with her colleague, Tobias Grietemeyer, wanted to know if there is a link between a preference for bitter tastes and antisocial traits, according to a Medical Daily article by Lizette Borelli. The study involved 1,000 volunteers, divided into two groups for two different experiments.
The first experiment involved 500 participants who were given a list of foods with an equal number of food items for each taste category: sweet, salty, bitter and sour. The list included common food such as chocolate cake, bacon and radishes and the participants where each participant was instructed to rate each food on a six-point scale. They were then given personality questionnaires designed to measure aggression levels.
On the other hand, the second experiment rated the remaining 500 participants using known markers of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. Like the first experiment, this group was asked to rate a shorter list of 20 food items that contained only two flavors - sweet and bitter.
The researchers' conclusion? The researchers concluded that "General bitter taste preference emerges as the robust predictor for Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism."
So does this study mean that people have to begin gorging on sweets to be perceived as nice? Not really, according to the Liquor.com article. In the first place, the data is too small to make sweeping generalizations for the entire population. In addition, there is still no experiment done to prove its opposite hypothesis - that people who don't like bitter drinks are actually kinder or more humane. Rather than being offended, the liquor.com author presented a list of bitter cocktail concoctions, for those who prefer bitter tastes of course.
Still, the study does present interesting ways to test new acquaintances and friends, don't you think? A link is provided for those who are a little more interested in learning of the methodology employed in the study.
