Sweets may make people sweeter, study says
Go ahead eat that candy. It may make someone like you more.
A new set of studies show that those who have a “sweet tooth” have more agreeable personalities.
“It is striking that helpful and friendly people are considered ‘sweet’ because taste would seem to have little in common with personality or behavior,” said lead study author Brian Meier, associate professor of psychology at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa., in a statement.
“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,” he said. “Importantly, our taste studies controlled for positive mood so the effects we found are not due to the happy or rewarding feeling one may have after eating a sweet food.”
The studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found those who ate sweet food, as opposed to non-sweet or no food, were more likely to help another person in need. Another study found that those who like sweets are perceived to be more agreeable or helpful.
Do you like sweets? Are you agreeable?
Patuxent Publishing photo
