What do love and jealousy taste like?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Common language links emotions like love and jealousy to tastes (sweet, sour, bitter).
• These metaphors suggest emotions might influence sensory perception, specifically taste judgments.
• Previous research indicates embodied cognition, where abstract concepts are understood via sensory experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if phenomenological experiences of love and jealousy are embodied in taste sensations.
• To test whether induced emotions of love and jealousy affect sweetness, sourness, and bitterness perception.
• To examine the relationship between metaphor endorsement and actual perceptual effects.

Main Methods:

• Validated endorsement of love-sweet, jealousy-bitter/sour metaphors (Studies 1A, 1B).
• Induced emotions (love, jealousy, neutral, happy) in participants.
• Assessed taste perception of sweet-sour candy, bitter-sweet chocolates, and water.

Main Results:

• Participants induced to feel love rated tastants as significantly sweeter than other groups.
• No significant differences were found in bitterness or sourness ratings between jealousy and control groups.
• Metaphor endorsement does not directly predict perceptual effects.

Conclusions:

• Emotions can influence basic perceptual judgments, demonstrating embodied cognition.
• The directionality suggested by taste-emotion metaphors may not always hold true in perception.
• Future research should explore the origins and nuances of metaphoric social cognition.