| Abstrakt: |
People who exhibit prosocial (i.e., extraverted) behavior are often characterized as being "sweet," while those exhibiting more introverted behaviors are sometimes labeled as "bitter," "sour," etc. Such social personifications, apart from their value as practical communication, may actually intimate complex personality traits. Positive correlations between hedonic response to taste sensation and personality type have been reported in the published literature and have been advanced as potentially predictive indicators of dietary habits and even diet-related disease susceptibility (e.g. obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, etc.). Such reports inspired us to hypothesize that individual hedonic response to sweet tastes would predict prosociality within a South Dakota State University (SDSU) student demographic. To explore this hypothesis, we modified standardized personality type and taste preference survey instruments and systematically administered them to students randomly selected from two distinct SDSU student sub-populations (N = 31). Surveys were modified to score only personality type (i.e., introvert vs. extravert) and taste preference (i.e., salty vs. sweetness). In contrast to some previously published studies, we detected no statistically significant positive correlation between personality type and taste preference response scores (one-tailed Pearson product-moment correlation analysis (α = 0.025; r = 0.203; P = 0.274). Because our study suffered from reduced statistical power (relative to previously published studies) and because subjects reported some confusion in understanding personality type survey instructions (in post-study interviews), we conclude that these two factors likely contributed experimental artifact sufficient to account for our contradictory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
