What do Love and Jealousy Taste Like?

Metaphorical expressions linking love and jealousy to sweet, sour, and bitter tastes are common in normal language use and suggest that these emotions may influence perceptual taste judgments. Hence, we investigated whether the phenomenological experiences of love and jealousy are embodied in the ta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2013-12, Vol.13 (6), p.1142-1149
Main Authors: Chan, Kai Qin, Tong, Eddie M. W, Tan, Deborah H, Koh, Alethea H. Q
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affectivity. Emotion
Biological and medical sciences
Data Collection
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Jealousy
Language
Love
Male
Metaphor
Olfaction. Taste
Perception
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Taste - physiology
Taste Perception
Young Adult
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Summary:Metaphorical expressions linking love and jealousy to sweet, sour, and bitter tastes are common in normal language use and suggest that these emotions may influence perceptual taste judgments. Hence, we investigated whether the phenomenological experiences of love and jealousy are embodied in the taste sensations of sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. Studies 1A and 1B validated that these metaphors are widely endorsed. In three subsequent studies, participants induced to feel love rated a variety of tastants (sweet-sour candy, bitter-sweet chocolates, and distilled water) as sweeter than those who were induced to feel jealous, neutral, or happy. However, those induced to feel jealous did not differ from those induced to feel happy or neutral on bitter and sour ratings. These findings imply that emotions can influence basic perceptual judgments, but metaphors that refer to the body do not necessarily influence perceptual judgments the way they imply. We further suggest that future research in metaphoric social cognition and metaphor theory may benefit from investigating how such metaphors could have originated.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/a0033758