If You Like Gin, You Might Be A Psychopath

You learn something new about yourself every day.

Do you enjoy a good martini? A stiff negroni? A gin rickey, perhaps? If you said yes to any of those, you might be a psychopath. Well, at least that’s what a team of scientists believe.

Psychologists from Innsbruck University in Austria found that people who enjoy the taste of bitter food and drink like gin, black coffee, arugula, and chocolate are likely to have the personality traits of a psychopath, including Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and “everyday sadism.” 

To come to this conclusion, the researchers ran two separate experiments where they asked 1,000 participants to rank an extensive list of various food and drink, and then complete a personality questionnaire that asked if they agreed with statements like “I enjoy tormenting people.” You know, to gauge how maniacal they were. 

The results of the two studies revealed that while most people aren’t too fond of ingesting bitter foods due to the fact that bitter generally means poisonous, psychopaths give no shits and are attracted to bitter things that could potentially kill them. Hence the “everyday sadism” trait. 

The author of the study, Christina Sagioglou, wrote in the report, “Everyday sadism is a construct related to benign Masochism – the enjoyment of painful activities – which was first described and investigated by psychologist Paul Rozin: ‘For the case of innately aversive foods, there may be pleasure from the fact that the body is signaling rejection, but the person knows there is no real threat’.”

Long story short, psychopaths like to confuse their bodies with foods that taste like they’re toxic, but actually aren’t, because it’s fun. Just keep that in mind next time you find yourself (or your Tinder date) ordering a gin and tonic.