The fact that you’re enjoying a glass of gin and tonic does not suggest you’re a psychopath
I was browsing Facebook in the evening last week and my eye was caught through the article ” Gin lovers are all massive psychopaths, according to experts.” It was an odd thing to read while sipping the tonic and gin I was consuming at the moment.
A person whose tendency to feel empathy for other people has led me to cry for hours on end over the suffering of film characters, I have never been on the list of diagnoses I have made for myself.
I immediately felt the need to know more about the ways in which a love for gin was now the latest diagnostic tool used to identify the presence of a psychopath. The truth is, it’s not.
I came to this conclusion fairly quickly. A search of the word “gin” in the research paper, which prompted this story, resulted in the same number of hits.
It’s thus quite alarming that this story has created numerous popular reports that all report this inexistent link, including this one, which was shared by Facebook over three hundred thousand times.
Based on the information you’ve read in love with Gin and Tonic, you’re likely to be an alcoholic or psychopath, or, less generously, you could be a psychopath.
Other stories have spread the web a bit further in the past, naming some coffee as well as beer drinkers as psychopaths, too. Which, when you consider it, makes society quite a terrifying environment.
Booze news
These stories are false versions of research conducted by researchers at The University of Innsbruck. Through two research studies, the researchers studied the connection between bitter taste preferences and negative personality traits, such as Psychopathy.
While many believe that it is a condition that only affects criminals who are the most calculated Psychopathy is also thought of as a character trait that runs along an arc and includes those who are on the end of the spectrum being defined by their superficial charm, insensitivity as well as a absence of compassion.
Researchers measured Psychopathy by using the short personality test, which measures three undesirable traits of a person’s personality such as the: psychopath, narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy – collectively referred to as the ” dark triad“.
Participants expressed their approval by stating, for example, “I tend to be callous or insensitive” and “I tend to lack remorse”. The responses were then summed to determine a score based on Psychopathy as well as the other traits.
The study measured bitter preferences for taste by using two methods. The first was that participants were presented with a selection of 10 beverages and foods that were bitter, such as coffee, tonic water, celery, radishes, and beer, and then rated them using a scale of one (dislike very strongly) up to six (like extremely). These scores were then summed to provide an overall assessment of bitter taste preferences for each participant. Researchers also surveyed participants on their preferences for bitter food as well as drinks generally (as in contrast to particular examples) using similar scales.
