Love drinking gin and tonic? You could be a psychopath, research suggests

A study has found that people with psychopathic tendencies are more likely to prefer bitter foods and drinks
Science says gin lovers share an unusual personality trait
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Liz Connor19 October 2017

Gin and tonic is a lot like Marmite - many of us can’t stand the bitter taste, while others swear by its refreshingly boozy properties.

Now psychologists are saying that a particular liking for bitter-tasting food and drinks, like a G&T, means you could have psychopathic tendencies.

Researchers found that those who opted for drinks like coffee and tonic water were more likely to exhibit signs of Machiavellianism, sadism and narcissism.

That is, they were more prone to being duplicitous, cold-hearted and lacking in empathy, vain and selfish, and more likely to derive pleasure from other people's pain.

The results were derived from two experiments conducted on 1,000 people by Innsbruck University in Austria.

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For the first experiment, 500 men and women were shown a long list of foods with equal numbers of sweet, salty, sour and bitter foods. These included chocolate cake, bacon, vinegar and radishes.

They were asked to score how much they liked each of them on a six-point scale ranging from dislike strongly to like strongly.

They were then asked to complete four separate personality questionnaires, which measured their levels of aggression, Machiavellianism, emotional stability, and tendency towards ‘everyday sadism’.

This involved rating on a scale how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as 'Given enough provocation, I may hit someone', and 'I enjoy tormenting people'.

Researchers then repeated the experiment with another sample of 500 people, which confirmed the results of the first.

'General bitter taste preferences emerged as a robust predictor for Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism,' the researchers wrote in the journal Appetite.

Agreeableness and cooperativeness, however, were negatively correlated with bitter taste preferences, they added.

Although the researchers did not conclude why people with these traits prefer bitter foods, they suggested that they may experience a kind of 'thrill' from them.

In the wild, bitter plants tend to signal that they may be poisonous, which is why many of us avoid eating consuming bitter-tasting foods.

But for people with sadistic traits, bitter food and drink may be 'compared to a rollercoaster ride, where people enjoy things that induce fear', said study author Christina Sagioglou.

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'We found particularly robust correlations with everyday sadism,' she said.

'Everyday sadism is a construct related to benign Masochism - the enjoyment of painful activities - , which was first described and investigated by psychologist Paul Rozin.

'To quote Paul Rozin for an explanation: "For the case of innately aversive foods, there may be pleasure from the fact that the body is signalling rejection, but the person knows there is no real threat".'

If you're a fan of G&T however, it's not all bad news - Oxford research psychologist Kevin Dutton has found that psychopaths are more likely to be smart, assertive, and cool under pressure – which naturally makes them strong leaders in the business world.

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