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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016, pp. 547–553

The potential relationship between spicy taste and risk seeking

Xue Wang∗ Liuna Geng† Jiawen Qin∗ Sixie Yao∗

Abstract

We conducted three studies to examine the relationship between spicy tastes and risk seeking. In Study 1, results from a

personality judgment task indicated that people were more inclined to attribute a higher level of risk seeking to individuals who

enjoy spicy foods. The second study examined whether people who like spicy foods are actually more risk seeking. In fact,

people who reported a preference for spicy tastes scored higher on risk taking, as assessed via the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking

Scale (Chinese version). Finally, Study 3 employed an experimental design to manipulate risk-seeking tendencies by having

participants experience spicy food tastes in the lab. Momentarily savoring spicy foods increased participants’ risk taking in

the Iowa Gambling Task. The present findings suggest that preferences for spicy tastes could relate to risk-seeking tendencies

and subsequent risk-seeking behaviors.

Keywords: spicy taste, risk seeking, personality.

1 Introduction

In the past decade, psychologists and nutritionists have ex-

amined the relationship between personality traits and food

choices. Several studies suggest that personality traits influ-

ence consumption of specific foods or substances. For exam-

ple, among the Big 5 personality factors, conscientiousness

and openness to experience are positively associated with

vegetable and fruit consumption (Raynor & Levine, 2009)

and negatively associated with eating meat products (Mõttus

et al., 2012). Research has also shown that an increased pref-

erence for caffeine is associated with higher levels of sensa-

tion seeking (Mattes, 1994). More abstractly, scholars have

addressed factors underlying taste preferences, particularly

the relationship between taste preferences and personality.

For instance, individuals with a preference for sweet foods

score higher on measures of agreeableness (Meier, Moeller,

Riemer-Peltz & Robinson, 2012) and neuroticism (Keller,

Steinmann, Nurse & Tepper, 2014; Kikuchi & Watanabe,

2000). As for spicy tastes (i.e., tastes elicited from spices

that produce oral irritation), preferences have been observed

around the world (especially Africa, India, China, and Mex-

ico; Ji, Ding, Deng, Ma & Jiang, 2013), in spite of these

foods (at least initially) being seemingly unpalatable. In

contrast, several people are averse to spicy foods due to re-

sultant painful sensations. While physiological reactions

Funding: The study described in this report was supported by the Jiangsu

university philosophy social science fund project “the mentality in the period

of social transformation” (No. 2015JDXM003). The funders had no role in

study design, data collection and analysis,

Copyright: © 2016. The authors license this article under the terms of

the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. ∗Department of Psychology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. †Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Nanjing University,

Nanjing, China. Email: [email protected].

affect preferences for spicy tastes, additional evidence sug-

gests that these taste preferences could be influenced by per-

sonality factors (Bartoshuk, 1993; Duffy, 2007; Duffy &

Bartoshuk, 2000; Miller & Reedy, 1990), social and cul-

tural contexts (Rozin & Schiller, 1980; Stevens, 1990), and

repeated exposure to spicy cuisine (Logue & Smith, 1986).

Thus, there is merit in exploring the relationship between

spicy tastes and personality traits.

The most common personality construct associated with

spicy taste is sensation seeking, which has been associated

with a preference for, and consumption of, spicy foods.

For instance, several studies have reported a positive rela-

tionship between sensation-seeking behaviors and enjoying

chili-containing foods (Byrnes & Hayes, 2013, 2015). Spicy

tastes create strong sensations (Ludy & Mattes, 2012), and

sensation seeking is an important predictor of risky behav-

iors, including aspects of criminality and social violations

(Horvath & Zuckerman, 1993). More direct evidence is in-

dicated by a positive relationship observed between eating

spicy foods and risk-taking subscale scores from the DSM5

Personality Inventory (PID–5) (Byrnes & Hayes, 2016).

Additionally, the theory of benign masochism provides a

possible explanation for why spicy consumption is related to

risk-seeking tendencies. Benign masochism refers to the en-

joyment derived from negative experiences that we initially

perceive as threatening (e.g., eating peppers, riding roller

coasters, etc.; Rozin & Schiller, 1980; Schweid, 1980). Al-

though eating spicy foods is typically accompanied by de-

fensive responses within the body (e.g., teary eyes and a

runny nose), certain individuals’ preferred level of piquancy

is below any tolerance level. Thus, while our body interprets

eating spicy food as risky, our mind seems to regard this

behavior as safe or at least a "constrained risk". Further-

more, Rozin and colleagues provided systematic evidence

547

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016 Spicy taste and risk seeking 548

for benign masochism across a range of activities, including

spicy taste consumption, and observed a positive correlation

between benign masochism and sensation seeking (Rozin,

Guillot, Fincher, Rozin & Tsukayama, 2013).

Based on the aforementioned literature, we explored the

relationship between spicy taste and risk-seeking traits and

behaviors. Study 1 implemented a personality judgment task

to examine beliefs that pertain to preferences for spicy foods

and risk seeking. We hypothesized that participants would

ascribe a higher level of risk seeking to individuals who enjoy

spicy tastes. Study 2 was an extension of Study 1 and exam-

ined whether people who like spicy foods actually engage in

more risky behaviors. More specifically, do people’s taste

preferences vary according to personality? We sought to an-

swer this question, particularly as it pertains to preferences

for spicy tastes coinciding with risk-seeking tendencies. We

hypothesized that individuals who enjoy spicy foods would

be more likely to take risks. Similar to Study 1, Study 2 re-

lied on self-report assessments of these constructs. Finally,

Study 3 investigated actual behavioral links to spicy taste

preferences and risk seeking. Thus, we examined whether

momentarily savoring a spicy food would influence risky

decisions. In line with predictions from Studies 1 and 2,

we expected that momentarily savoring spicy tastes would

increase individuals’ risk-seeking behaviors.

2 Study 1

2.1 Methods

2.1.1 Participants

Forty-nine Chinese students (28 females) from Nanjing Uni-

versity voluntarily participated in this study. The mean age

of the sample was 21.36 years (SD = 2.14), ranging from 18

to 27 years.

2.1.2 Materials

The Chinese Facial Affective Picture System. Previous

research has demonstrated the existence of facial stereotypes

whereby people tend to associate attractiveness with positive

personality traits. Thus, we utilized a personality judgment

task aimed at preventing participants from determining at-

tractiveness based on these personality judgments (Ji et al.,

2013; Meier et al., 2012; Meier, Robinson, Carter & Hinsz,

2010). We selected 20 facial images displaying a neutral

expression from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System

(Gong, Huang, Wang & Luo, 2011). We sampled an equal

number of male and female faces (10 each). Photographs

were taken from the neck to the top of the head and are

in black and white. Each photograph was paired with a

statement indicating that individual’s taste preferences. In

previous work, food items, such as lemons, have been used

without indicating a particular type of taste (Ji et al., 2013;

Meier, Moeller et al., 2012). However, we believed that en-

joyment of a specific food item would not necessarily be the

same as a preference for a certain taste type. For instance, it

is possible that participants would infer someone else’s per-

sonality based other food characteristics beyond taste. Thus,

we used direct statements, such as "I have a preference for

spicy tastes", in the task. To preclude any facial expression

effects, each facial expression was judged according to four

tastes (including sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy). Participants

were required to make a total of 80 judgments. The taste-

face pairings were the same for each participant. Finally, we

calculated average scores among the 20 taste-face pairings

for each taste.

For each judgment, the face image and its correspond-

ing statement were presented to participants for 1.5 seconds.

Next, information was removed, and participants were re-

quired to judge the extent to which the person shown in the

picture was likely to be "irritable" and "risk seeking", using

a 7-point Likert scale, where 1 = not at all and 7 = extremely.

The personality trait "irritable" was used based on previous

evidence of a relationship between spicy preferences and

irritability (Ji et al., 2013), and the personality trait "risk

seeking" was the target trait in our experiment.

2.1.3 Procedure

Participants were informed that they were going to perform

a facial recognition task. An initial inquiry revealed that no

participant had previously taken part in similar tasks involv-

ing these black and white facial pictures. After providing

written consent, each participant completed the personality

judgment task according to the experimental instructions.

After completion, the participants were thanked and de-

briefed.

2.2 Results

All participants performed the tasks as directed. However,

the final inquiry revealed that two male participants had

insights into the study’s aims; thus, these participants were

excluded from the analyses. A repeated-measures analysis

of variance (ANOVA), based on the means of each condition

for each participant, was conducted to examine the effects of

taste type on personality judgments. Results are provided in

Table 1. We observed that taste type significantly affected

judgments of irritability and risk seeking (as shown by the F

tests in the leftmost column of Table 1). For both irritability

and risk-seeking, all three other tastes were rated significantly

lower than spicy (as shown by the t tests in Table 1).1

1The analysis in Table 1 was supported by an additional analysis using

the lmer() function in the lme4 package for R (Bates et al., 2015). This

allowed us to examine both subjects and faces as crossed random effects.

All tests were, like those shown in Table 1, highly significant.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016 Spicy taste and risk seeking 549

Table 1: Descriptive statistics and t-values for the personality

judgment task.

Taste N M SD t p

Irritable

(F(3,44)=9.10)

spicy 47 4.43 .88

sour 47 3.98 .73 t=3.42 < .01

sweet 47 3.68 .99 t=4.12 < .01

bitter 47 4.00 .73 t=2.97 < .01

Risk seeking

(F(3,44)=13.18)

spicy 47 4.37 .89

sour 47 3.87 .78 t=5.39 < .01

sweet 47 3.41 .86 t=5.25 < .01

bitter 47 3.96 .82 t=2.56 < .05

t-value indicates the comparison between the spicy

taste and one of the other three tastes.

F-value indicates the comparison among the overall

four tastes.

3 Study 2

3.1 Methods

3.1.1 Participants

One hundred thirteen Chinese students (57 females) from

Nanjing University voluntarily completed two question-

naires. Participants’ mean age was 20.13 years (SD = .85),

ranging from 18 to 23 years.

3.1.2 Materials

Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT)/Chinese

(DOSPERT-C). Weber, Blais and Betz (2002) designed

the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) to as-

sess the propensity to take risks across six content domains:

investment, gambling, health/safety, recreational, social, and

ethical decisions. Due to cultural differences, a Chinese ver-

sion was utilized in our study (Hu & Xie, 2012), where the

social and investment domains were combined into one fac-

tor. Thus, there were five specific domains in the Chinese

version: gambling (items 3, 9, 19, 28), health/safety (items

24, 27, 31, 34, 35), recreational (items 2, 5, 13, 15, 18,

26, 32, 33), ethical (items 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 23,) and social-

investment (items 1, 6, 8, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 29,

30). Participants were instructed to rate these 35 items on

a 7-point scale that ranged from 1 "strongly disagree" to 7

"strongly agree". In the present study, the Cronbach’s α for

the total scale was 0.83.

Table 2: Descriptive statistics and results of bivariate cor-

relation analyses for relationships between taste preferences

and DOSPERT-C total scale scores.

N M SD r p

Liking sour tastes 113 1.79 0.88 .02 >.05

Liking sweet tastes 113 2.22 1.00 –.12 >.05

Liking bitter tastes 113 1.56 0.83 .13 >.05

Liking spicy tastes 113 3.08 1.04 .37 <.01

r-value indicates the correlation between liking

a taste and DOSPERT-C total scale score.

3.1.3 Procedure

Participants were asked to rate their enjoyment of four taste

types (sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy) on a 7-point scale (1

= strongly dislike, 7 = strongly like). Subsequently, we in-

structed participants to complete the DOSPERT-C scale. Af-

ter completion, participants were debriefed and thanked.

3.2 Results

All participants’ data were used (Table 2). As predicted,

bivariate correlation analyses revealed that liking spicy tastes

was positively correlated with a propensity to take risks (r

= 0.37, p < .01). When individual enjoyment for other taste

types were controlled with partial corrlation, the correlation

coefficient between liking spicy taste and DOSPERT-C was

essentially unchanged (rbitter = .37, p < .01; rsour= .37, p

< .01; rsweet = .38, p < .01). A regression analysis also

indicated that liking spicy tastes was the only significant

predictor of risk-seeking attitudes (β = .37, p < .01, R2 =

.18). We further examined the relationship between liking

spicy tastes and scores on the DOSPERT-C domain scores.

Significant correlations were observed between liking spicy

tastes and scores on all five domains: gambling (r = .24, p <

.05), recreational (r = .29, p < .01), ethical (r = .24, p < .05),

social-investment (r = .25, p < .01), and healthy (r = .17, p <

.10).

4 Study 3

4.1 Methods

4.1.1 Participants

Fifty-one Chinese students (30 females) from Nanjing Uni-

versity voluntarily participated in Study 3. Participants were

provided with either course credits or 15 Yuan for their par-

ticipation. Participants’ mean age was 19.78 years (SD =

.88) and ranged from 18 to 21 years. They were assigned at

random to two conditions: spicy and control.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016 Spicy taste and risk seeking 550

4.1.2 Materials

Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The Iowa Gambling Task

was initially developed to assess and quantify decision-

making difficulties among patients with neurological deficits

(Bechara, Damasio, Damasio & Anderson, 1994). We used

it because it simulates real-world decision-making under un-

certainty. The IGT consists of four card decks: A, B, C,

and D. Participants are provided an imaginary loan of $2000

and are required to win as much money as possible during

the task. Each card type accompanies an immediate reward:

$100 for decks A or B and $50 for decks C or D. However, a

penalty is imposed for every ten cards chosen. The penalty

is large among decks A and B and small among decks C and

D. Players cannot predict when a penalty will occur. There-

fore, decks A and B are "risk-seeking" decks. By contrast,

decks C and D are "risk-aversion" decks. A higher percent-

age of choosing from decks A and B is assumed to assess

risk-seeking behavior. Participants perform 50 trials, with 5

penalty trials. We compared the two groups in the percent-

age of choosing the risk-seeking decks (deck A or deck B)

relative to the risk-aversion decks (decks C or D).

Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The

Positive and Negative Affect Schedule was developed by

Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988) and is comprised of 2,

10-item mood scales. The PANAS is a valid and reliable tool

for measuring positive and negative affect. In our study, we

adopted a Chinese version of the PANAS (Huang, Yang & Ji,

2003). The PANAS requires participants to report the extent

to which they are currently experiencing 10 positive feelings

and 10 negative feelings on a 5-point scale (1 = very slightly,

5 = extremely). The means for positive affect and negative

affect are calculated by averaging scores for the 10 positive

and 10 negative feeling states, separately. The Cronbach’s α

for the positive affect scale was .87, and the Cronbach’s α

for the negative affect scale was .88.

4.1.3 Procedure

Participants were informed that they would be involved in

a study on "food tasting". Assessments at the end of the

experiment revealed that participants did not know the ac-

tual purpose of our study. Participants were assigned to one

of two conditions: a spicy condition (N = 25) or a con-

trol condition (N = 26). First, participants completed the

DOSPERT-C. Next, those in the spicy condition were in-

structed to eat a piece of tasteless bread covered in chili

sauce. We used the same chili sauce, which is regarded as

very spicy for most Chinese people. Before tasting, we asked

participants whether they would be willingly to taste the chili

and whether they would have any acute physical reactions to

the chili sauce (e.g., an allergy). Eating a piece of tasteless

bread covered in chili sauce may be more acceptable for par-

ticipants than just eating chili sauce, though it seems less

common in daily life. Participants in the control condition

were instructed to just eat a plain piece of tasteless bread.

Next, participants were asked to complete the PANAS. After

completing the PANAS, participants did the IGT, which was

presented in Inquisit 3.0 on a computer. After completion,

participants were debriefed and thanked.

4.2 Results

All participants’ data were available for analyses.

Independent-samples t-tests were conducted to compare dif-

ferences between the spicy group and the control group. As

shown in Table 3, baseline assessments revealed no signifi-

cant differences between the two groups (t(49) = –.33, p > .05,

ESd = –.10). Additionally, positive affect (t(49) = –.24, p >

.05, ESd = .14) and negative affect (t(49) = –.15, p > .05, ESd

= –.04) did not significantly differ between the two groups.

Further analyses revealed that individuals in the spicy group

were more inclined to take risks during the IGT compared to

those in the control group (t(49) = 3.08, p < .01, ESd = .86).2

DOSPERT-C scores correlated non-significantly in the

predicted direction (r = .06) with IGT. There could be sev-

eral reasons for this low correlation, aside from the small

sample size. Firstly, the DOSPERT and IGT are very distinct

methods for measuring risk-taking tendencies, which could

result in low interrelationships. Secondly, the chili sauce ma-

nipulation could elicit different effects on IGT performance,

even if participants’ initial DOSPERT scores were similar

across groups. Finally, although Hu and Xie (2012) revised

the DOSPERT for Chinese participants, some items on this

scale are still regarded as problematic according to partici-

pants’ feedback. Thus, participants’ reports could have been

affected by problematic expressions.

5 Discussion

Previous research suggests that gustatory experiences are of-

ten involved in our understanding of social cognition. For

example, sweet tastes are related to prosocial personality

traits (Meier et al., 2012) and romantic perceptions between

lovers (Ren et al., 2015), while bitter tastes are associated

with survival motivation and moral disgust (Chapman et al.,

2009; Chen & Chang, 2012; Eskine et al., 2011). Our stud-

ies attempted to establish a relationship between spicy taste

preferences and risk-seeking tendencies/behaviors. Study

1 showed that participants perceived individuals that liked

spicy tastes as being more risk seeking. This belief has been

2Additional analysis confirmed this effect by fitting a straight line to

each participant’s choice of the risky decks and examine the intercept at the

point of the last choice. This analysis was thus more sensitive to experience

with the task and less sensitive to initial tendency to choose one deck or

another. The intercept also also showed a highly significant group difference

(t45 = 3.66, p = .001.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016 Spicy taste and risk seeking 551

Table 3: Descriptive statistics and t-values for the DOSPERT-C, PANAS, and IGT.

DOSPERT-C Positive affect Negative affect IGT

Spicy Control Spicy Control Spicy Control Spicy Control

N 25 26 25 26 25 26 25 26

M 2.74 2.78 2.96 2.85 1.75 1.78 61.60 52.85

SD .33 .46 .81 .71 .49 .83 11.62 8.51

t –.33 .50 –.15 3.08

p >.05 >.05 >.05 <.01

t-value indicates the comparison between the control group and

the spicy group.

observed within a variety of cultures worldwide. For exam-

ple, in some areas of China, such as Sichuan and Chongqing,

local residents with a preference for spicy foods are re-

garded as big-hearted, brave, and irritable (Ji et al., 2013).

There is also a stereotype within Mexican culture that people

who enjoy chili peppers are perceived to be more masculine

(Rozin & Schiller, 1980). In the US, eating chili peppers is

grouped with several risk-seeking activities, including gam-

bling and riding roller coasters (Byrnes & Hayes, 2013).

Study 2 demonstrated that people reporting a preference for

spicy tastes actually scored higher on a risk-seeking mea-

sure (DOSPERT-C). This finding provides support for the

perceived association between spicy taste preferences and

risk-seeking tendencies. Finally, in Study 3, a propensity

for actually engaging in risky behaviors increased after con-

suming a spicy food. Together, these three studies provide

evidence that spicy food preferences may be reliably linked

to risk-seeking attitudes and behaviors.

In the three studies, we found supportive evidence for the

link between spicy tastes and risk-seeking personality traits.

The biological underpinnings linking spicy taste experiences

and risk-seeking behavior may also support this relationship.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with the brain’s

reward system and is involved in risky behaviors and deci-

sion making, including gambling and addiction. Byrnes and

Hayes (2016) revealed a positive relationship between reward

sensitivity and yearly spicy food intake. It is possible that the

dopaminergic reward system could play a role in savoring

spicy food and resultant risk-taking tendencies/behaviors.

Spicy taste could stimulate dopamine.

Study 3 observed that spicy food consumption led to more

risk-seeking behaviors, but we were unable to fully conclude

that spicy taste consumption actually predicts risk-seeking

behaviors. Although personality traits are somewhat affected

by situational factors (Schwarz, 1999), such traits tend to be

relatively stable over time (McCrae & Costa, 1994). Fur-

thermore, there are inconsistencies in whether the IGT ac-

tually uncovers true risk-seeking patterns (Dunn, Dalgleish

& Lawrence, 2006); thus, more risk-seeking tendencies on

the IGT do not necessarily represent a dispositional trait. In

addition, it is highly possible that personality plays a signif-

icant role on determining spicy food preferences (Stevens,

1996). Thus, any causal association between spicy tastes and

risk-seeking should be carefully addressed in future studies.

Our studies observed potential relationships between spicy

tastes and risk-seeking, which constitutes a contribution to

existing literature. Firstly, we provided evidence that in-

dividuals assume that others’ who prefer spicy tastes are

more likely to take risks (Study 1). This was confirmed

by individuals who reported spicy taste preferences actually

endorsing more risk-taking behaviors (Study 2). Finally,

we observed that risky behaviors were facilitated by the ac-

tual consumption of spicy foods in the lab. While previous

literature assessing spicy taste preferences has been con-

ducted on Western samples, the current studies extended our

understanding of spicy tastes and risk seeking among Chi-

nese samples. China has a long history of producing and

consuming spicy food, legitimizing assessments into these

taste-personality links within this context.

A few study limitations should be noted. For instance,

in Study 3, we compared only two conditions (spicy group

and control group) and did not address other taste conditions

(e.g., sour, sweet, and bitter). It is unknown whether other

tastes would affect IGT performance, which limits interpre-

tations of our present findings. And we found no correlation

between the DOSPERT-C and the IGT (and did not examine

individual differences in spicy taste preferences); this prob-

lem does not affect the main result (an effect of eating spicy

food on the IGT), because of random assignment to condi-

tions. Overall, the present results are an initial step toward

understanding the potential relationship between spicy tastes

and risk taking. Future work will need to continue carefully

examining additional variables that could possibly influence

this relationship.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2016 Spicy taste and risk seeking 552

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