Sweetness may be contagious. A growing body of research has revealed that the type of people who have a sweet tooth may also have a sweet temperament.
“According to the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors such as ‘love is sweet’ may be more than just linguistic terms — they can build scaffolds to unconsciously guide our behavior,” says Michael Schaefer, a neuropsychologist at Medical School Berlin.
A Sweet Tooth and Sweet Temperament
In research published in 2012, Brian Meier, a psychologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and his colleagues studied the potential link between sweets and temperament. They confirmed that people commonly believed those with a sweet tooth were typically more agreeable.
In other tests, the team gave sweet chocolate to some participants and non-sweet food like crackers to others, and found that the former were more likely to help people in need. They also found that people who professed a liking for sweet foods were more likely than those who did not like sweet foods to assist in cleaning up their city after a flood.
