The Washington Post released an article called “Sweet and Sour” by Marta Zaranska this week that was quite interesting, to say the least.
The article described a plethora of research and increase in studying a potential psychological-olfactory correlation. According to the article, in essence, mood and taste buds are linked. According to studies, your mood can influence things such as how sweet the water is that you are tasting.
… And this is just the beginning.
Not only can mood influence the things we taste,but the things we taste can also influence our mood and perceptions about our environment around us. The results have shown that ingesting sweets has the potential to “make you feel more romantic” and a 2013 experiment found that just thinking of love can even make plain water “taste sweeter”.
Nancy Dess, a professor of psychology at Occidental College in Los Angeles performed a study on bitter sensitive rats. Her findings found that those that showed a higher aversion to bitterness were also “more jumpy” then regular rats and showed hire indicators of stress than others. in addition, they also showed higher levels of social subordination.
In addition, a propensity towards certain tastes can tell a lot about an individual’s personality type. The article describes how individuals who are typically more sensitive to bitter taste are not only more easily disgusted than others but also have a tendency to be more emotional “…after watchingand anger and do you think video then other people”.
A 2014 study conducted by German and American psychologist showed that bitter-sensitive individuals were much more likely to be “jumpy” and react more strongly when exposed to loud noises.according to science, this makes sense. Naturally bitterness tells us that a food could potential he contain toxins and is an indicator of danger. So, it is therefore logical to find that bitter sensitive individuals would also have a higher level of sensitivity to other cues of dangerin other aspects of life.
Furthermore, The author went on to state that people who enjoyed foods with more bitter notes in them (i.e. tonic water, radishes)we’re more inclined than others to admit that they “enjoyed tormenting people or that they tend to manipulate others to get their way”.
Does your significant other tend to enjoy a nice, wholesome grapefruit every morning for breakfast? Be careful–Because if they do, they’re probably a sociopath..
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