14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent paper, a team of researchers at Innsbruck University in Austria propose that a person's most distinctive personality traits correlate with their taste in foods and drinks.
Thus, the specialists argue that, according to their investigations, people who display a clear preference for bitter tastes are more likely to have psychopathic tendencies.
A disregard for morality, sadism and narcissism appear to also be more common among individuals who prefer foods and drinks that are ever so slightly bitter, the team claims.
In a nutshell, it would appear that people who drink their coffee black or prefer dark chocolate are statistically more likely to be vain, selfish and not exactly familiar to empathy.
“The results suggest that how much people like bitter-tasting foods and drinks is stably tied to how dark their personality is,” the research team summed up their findings in an interview, as cited by DM.
Documenting how taste in foods and drinks correlates with personality
In a report detailing their work, the Innsbruck University specialists explain that, as part of this study, they first had volunteers rate foods that were sweet, salty, sour or bitter.
They then asked them to complete questionnaires designed to measure their aggressiveness and identify malevolent traits such as psychopathic tendencies, narcissism, selfishness and sadism.
The researchers say that, when all the information was compiled and analyzed, they discovered that these personality traits were more common among the study participants who preferred bitter tastes.
“General bitter taste preferences emerged as a robust predictor for Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism,” the research team wrote in their paper.
The scientists never attempted to determine why it is that not-so-friendly people seem to prefer bitter tastes. Still, they suspect they enjoy them because they give them a thrill.
It's kind of like their way of not playing by the rules by welcoming experiences they aren't supposed to enjoy, the specialists theorize.