If you like your coffee black rather than all milky, frothy and syrupy then many will say you’re just drinking it as it’s meant to be drunk.
However, if you have a liking for the bitter tipple then it could be a sign that you’re a psychopath, according to research.
Scientists studying taste buds have discovered similarities between the consumption of some of our preferred beverages like bitter IPAs, black coffee and tonic water and malevolent personality traits.
So you might want to be cautious if you’ve got a friend or partner who avoids milk and sugar in their cup of Joe.
The study, published in the journal Appetite, surveyed 1,000 people and was conducted at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
Participants ranked various foods on a six-point scale and were then subjected to a test identifying their personality traits.
Authors Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer discovered that the more consumers enjoyed bitter flavours, the darker their personality traits, and they wrote that the existing research had shown that bitter taste preferences were associated with more noticeable malevolent personality traits, especially robustly with everyday sadism.
And they added that in preferring bitter-tasting foods more than less sadistic people, everyday sadists may see them as positive due to their potential to cause distaste, that is, to cause a negative experience in other people.
This isn’t the first time research has discovered a connection between taste and personality.
Past studies have shown sweet taste experiences increase agreeable and eagerness to help, while bitter tastes increase hostility and elicit harsher moral judgments.
This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve heard. I’ve been drinking my coffee black for the past thirty years, and I’m the most laid back person there is. Any more laid back and I’d be horizontal.
And it does make me wonder if people are getting paid to come up with this twaddle, and if so, then perhaps I’ve been in the wrong job all these years.
