Psychopaths can be picky. For example, if you’re waiting in line at your local coffee shop and the guy in front of you is unnervingly insistent on his coffee being black, you might just be in the queue next to a psychopath. But when happy hour rolls around, how are we supposed to weed out the mad among us?
According to Men’s Health, you need to keep your eyes peeled for those lime wedges and quinine-laced bubbles because psychopaths love the bitter bite of a gin and tonic. A study conducted by Austria’s Innsbruck University ran two trials on a research group of 953 participants, with eyes toward finding a link between food and drink preferences and “malevolent personality traits.”
One half of the experiment involved the participants assessing a list of bitter, sour, sweet, and salty foods and drinks on a scale of one to six. The other half of the study involved a personality questionnaire which would gauge each participant’s levels of “Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, everyday sadism, trait aggression, and the Big Five factors of personality.”
The paper cites several studies which link a bitter food/drink preference, also known as “Supertasting,” to “increased emotionality” and differences in food consumption habits, but makes a point to mentioned that “To our knowledge, this is the first research linking taste preferences to antisocial personality traits.” The study may be the first of its kind, but the authors claim that it stands on solid footing.
“The data thereby provide novel insights into the relationship between personality and the ubiquitous behaviors of eating and drinking by consistently demonstrating a robust relation between increased enjoyment of bitter foods and heightened sadistic proclivities,” notes the study.
If your blind date is taking his dessert with a grain of cacao, maybe take his eerie kindness with a grain of salt. And if your discussion turns to music, keep an eye out for these tunes—psychopaths do have musical preferences, after all.
[Source: Men’s Health]
The post If You Order This Drink at the Bar, You Might Just Be a Psychopath appeared first on Reader's Digest.
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