Can your personality impact the foods you love to eat? Or what snacks change people’s perceptions of you?
By Jennipher Walters
According to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers looked at whether or not people who ate sweet foods were more likely to volunteer to help another person in need as compared to people who ate non-sweet foods or no food at all. Their results? People who preferred the sweet foods were more likely to help others, and others believed that someone who has a sweet tooth is more agreeable or helpful. The research controlled for positive mood, so the effects were not due to the happy or rewarding feeling one may have after eating a sweet food, researchers say.
“It is striking that helpful and friendly people are considered ‘sweet’ because taste would seem to have little in common with personality or behavior,” Dr. Brian Meier, associate professor of psychology at Gettysburg College, told ScienceDaily. “Yet, recent psychological theories of embodied metaphor led us to hypothesize that seemingly innocuous metaphors can be used to derive novel insights about personality and behavior.”
The researchers aren’t sure if the study would hold up in other cultures, but in the U.S. eating sweet is linked with being sweet. Funny, right? Can you think of someone in your life who has a sweet tooth and also has a sweet personality? Do you have a sweet tooth? Do tell!
via Source
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