journal review

Your Journal Review should contain all of the following components and should conform to APA style. I will also attach an example of what you need to know for format.  Basically though, it should have a cover page with Running head and page number, minimum of one page of text double-spaced 12pt font, 1 inch margins all around, and reference page with your article reference.

a.       Briefly (1/2 to 1 page) summarize the primary purpose(s)/goal(s) of your article (this should be a short summary of the journal article).

b.      State what you feel are the three (or more) most important aspects/issues of your article and why.

c.       State what other information would have been helpful for your article.

d.      State how your article supports or contradicts your views concerning the topic of your article.

e.       State how you might use the information in your article when working with people.

f.       Define your overall view of your article and any other comments pertaining to your article (e.g., did the article adequately explain all research methodology?)

Remember this Journal Article Review must come from the attached list

DOES “SPICY GIRL” HAVE A PEPPERY TEMPER? THE METAPHORICAL LINK BETWEEN SPICY TASTES AND ANGER TING-TING JI, YI DING, HUAN DENG, JING MA, AND QI JIANG, Southwest University Drawing upon the theories of conceptual metaphors and embodiment, in the present study we systematically examined the metaphorical link between spicy tastes and anger. In terms of personality, the results showed that participants presumed strangers who liked spicy foods (e.g., chili peppers) were more easily angered (Experiment 1). In addition, we found that people who are higher in trait anger are more likely to have a spicy food preference (Experiment 2). The findings support a metaphorical mapping between taste and personality processes. Keywords: spicy tastes, spicy food, anger, personality traits, metaphor, embodiment. Gustatory experiences can influence our everyday expression in a metaphorical way. In China, the term “spicy girl” is used to describe females who are easily angered. The cross-domain mapping of metaphors plays a vital role in such conceptualizations. Through this mapping, individuals are able to represent abstract concepts that are less familiar and difficult to grasp by using more common, concrete concepts attained from sensory perceptual experiences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Of the physical experiences used to build our understanding of abstract concepts, gustatory experience is a key factor. For example, sweet taste has been shown to predict prosocial personalities (Meier, Moeller, Riemer-Peltz, & Robinson, 2012), while bitter taste is related to moral disgust and survival SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2013, 41(8), 1379-1386 © Society for Personality Research http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2013.41.8.1379 1379 Ting-Ting Ji, Yi Ding, Huan Deng, Jing Ma, and Qi Jiang, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University. Ting-Ting Ji and Yi Ding contributed equally to this study. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Qi Jiang, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, 1 Tiansheng Road, Beibei, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected] 1380 SPICY TASTES AND ANGER motivation (Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson, 2009; Chen & Chang, 2011; Eskine, Kacinik, & Prinz, 2011). In comparison with bitter- and sweet-related metaphors, spicy-related metaphors have rarely been investigated. In fact, because of the lack of specific taste receptors, spicy is not counted among the five basic tastes (Chandrashekar, Hoon, Ryba, & Zuker, 2006), but is instead a mixed sensation of burning irritation and other tastes (Richardson & Saliba, 2011). However, spicy taste is an important part of China, India, Mexico, and many other countries’ food culture. Because metaphorical expression and interpretation vary across cultures (Deignan, 2003; Littlemore, 2003), metaphor effects in Eastern culture are worthy of attention for their cultural significance. Physiologically, eating spicy food and getting angry share the same physical responses: an increase in body heat, a red face, and even sweat production. Therefore, the similarity between the experience of feeling anger and eating spicy food in daily life may lead to a spicy–anger metaphor. Empirically, in previous studies researchers have suggested a significant and positive correlation between high sensation seeking and preference for spicy foods (Ludy & Mattes, 2012; Terasaki & Imada, 1988), and high sensation seeking corresponds to the traits of irritability and impulsivity (Richardson & Saliba, 2011). Therefore, we hypothesized that there would be a link between an irritable personality and a preference for spicy foods. We believed that participants would infer that strangers who like spicy foods are more easily angered, and people who are more irritable are more likely to like spicy foods. Experiment 1 We used a zero-acquaintance personality judgment task (Meier et al., 2012; Meier, Robinson, Carter, & Hinsz, 2010) in which pictures of strangers were paired with statements indicating their preference for food items with a dominant taste of sour, sweet, bitter, or spicy. Participants were asked to judge the personalities of these strangers. If spicy–anger metaphors guide personality inferences of irritability, people will judge that strangers who like spicy food have a higher level of irritability. Method Participants. Eighty-five undergraduate students from a university in China (19 males, Mage = 19.51, SD = 0.62 years) participated in the experiment for a payment of ¥10 (US$1.62). We obtained informed consent from all individuals prior to their participation. Procedure and materials. Upon arrival, the participants were told that the experimenters were interested in the participant’s ability to make snap judgments SPICY TASTES AND ANGER 1381 concerning the personality of others, and that they would be asked to complete a personality judgment task. Pictured targets consisted of 20 black and white pictures of neutral facial expressions photographed from the neck up, which were selected from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System (Gong, Huang, Wang, & Luo, 2011). The pictures selected were balanced according to sex (male = 10), arousal (M = 3.90, SD = 0.26), and attraction (M = 4.24, SD = 0.12). During the task, each trial proceeded as follows: first, a picture of a stranger was randomly paired with a statement indicating a liking for a particular food item (“I like X”), and such information was presented for 1.20 seconds. There were 20 items that spanned 4 taste types, with 5 items each: sweet (e.g., cream), bitter (e.g., balsam pear), sour (e.g., lemons), and spicy (e.g., chili pepper). This information was then removed and the participants were asked to judge the extent to which the specific target was likely to be “irritable”, “extraverted”, and “self-reliant”, based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 6 = extremely. The order of the personality ratings was randomized to preclude systematic order effects. Each food item was paired with 1 face, for 20 trials, with a total of 60 personality judgments. Results and Discussion A 3 (personality factor: irritable, extraverted, self-reliant) × 4 (taste type: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy) within-subjects repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant main effects for both personality traits (F(2, 168) = 26.82, p < .001, 2 = .04) and taste type (F(3, 252) = 6.44, p < .001, 2 = .03), and an interaction between personality traits and taste type was indicated (F(6, 504) = 28.16, p < .001, 2 = .11). Targets with a stated preference for spicy taste (M = 3.85, SD = 0.86) were rated as more irritable than those with a stated preference for sour (M = 3.37, SD = 0.85; t(84) = 5.20, p < .001), sweet (M = 3.17, SD = 0.84; t(84) = 7.39, p < .001), or bitter (M = 3.28, SD = 0.86; t(84) = 6.08, p < .001). Considering the discriminant validity, three personality traits of targets who like spicy food were compared. As expected, self-reliance ratings (M = 3.50, SD = 0.79) were lower than both extraversion ratings (M = 3.82, SD = 0.97; t(84) = -3.11, p = .002) and irritability ratings (M = 3.85, SD = 0.86; t(84) = -4.00, p < .001). However, the distinction between extraversion ratings and irritability ratings was less clear (t(84) = 0.243, p = .808), which supports the previous finding. Individuals seemed to ascribe higher levels of extraversion to targets expressing a liking for spicy foods (Meier et al., 2012). The results gained in Experiment 1 indicate that people who like and eat spicy food are more likely to be regarded as irritable and extraverted. 1382 SPICY TASTES AND ANGER Experiment 2 Experiment 1 showed that targets with a stated liking of spicy foods were rated as being higher in irritability. Is there a kernel of truth to such inferences? We sought to answer this question in Experiment 2. We hypothesized that individuals with a high anger trait would in fact exhibit greater preferences for spicy tastes, thereby extending the findings of Study 1 to the personality. Method Participants. Participants were 102 undergraduate students from a university in China (12 male, Mage = 21.20, SD = 1.69 years) who took part in the study in return for a small payment of ¥10 (US$1.62). We obtained informed consent from all individuals prior to their participation. Procedure and materials. The participants were informed that the experiment comprised two unrelated tasks. First, using a 6-point scale ranging from 1 = strongly dislike to 6 = strongly like, participants were asked to rate their liking for 12 types of food from a dietary preference questionnaire that contained the four taste types used in Experiment 1. The food presented in the questionnaire was selected based a pilot experiment in which 32 participants had participated. The three most nominated food items for each taste were selected. Participants were asked to indicate the extent (1 = almost never to 4 = almost always) to which their behaviors fit a description of 10 items from the trait anger subscale of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory II (STAXI-II; Spielberger, 1999) as revised by Tao (2009). Results and Discussion The average scores were computed for each taste preference (sour = .46, M = 4.53, SD = 0.69; sweet = .38, M = 4.97, SD = 0.63; bitter = .56, M = 3.49, SD = 0.99; spicy = .68, M = 4.40, SD = 1.04) and trait anger subscale ( = .75, M = 1.97, SD = 0.36). The subsequent correlation analysis suggested that trait anger was significantly correlated with spicy (r(100) = 0.28, p = .005) and sour (r(100) = 0.23, p = .02) preferences, and when the other taste types were controlled in a partial correlation analysis, spicy (r(100) = 0.26, p = .008) and sour (r(100) = 0.21, p = .04) preferences were still significantly correlated with trait anger. There was no such correlation for the other taste types. Experiment 2 is an important extension of Experiment 1. Although the correlation between trait anger and spicy preference was quite low, the statistically significant r values demonstrated that people who like spicy food are more easily angered. Furthermore, the results revealed that “sour” was also related to trait anger. SPICY TASTES AND ANGER 1383 General Discussion We found a possible link between irritability personality and spicy taste preference. Participants presumed that strangers who liked spicy foods were more easily angered (Experiment 1) and we also found that people who are higher in trait anger are more likely to have a spicy food preference (Experiment 2). These findings support a metaphorical mapping between taste and personality process. According to embodied metaphor theory, through scaffolding mechanisms, our early sensory-motor experiences are used to ground later abstract conceptual achievements (Barsalou, 2008; Williams, Huang, & Bargh, 2009). As a common taste in most Chinese families, spiciness is one kind of early gustatory perceptual experiences that is used to ground later abstract conceptions such as personality. With regard to the physiological basis of the spicy–anger metaphor, both getting angry and eating capsaicin-containing chili peppers can stimulate the secretion of noradrenalin which causes an increase in body heat, a red face, and even sweating (Lako, 1987; Marinelli, Vaughan, Christie, & Connor, 2002). For this reason they share the same physical responses, and the commonalities between being angry and ingesting spicy food are likely to underlie the use of “spicy” terms or expressions to describe anger-related concepts (such as “spicy girl”), which has led to the establishment of the spicy–anger metaphor. Moreover, a third variable, sensation seeking, should be taken into account. Sensation seeking is a strong predictor of risky behavior (Horvath & Zuckerman, 1993). Therefore, it is plausible to argue that high sensation-seeking people prefer stronger sensations so, for food, they choose more novel foods; spicy food, for instance (Pliner & Melo, 1997; Terasaki & Imada, 1988). In terms of interpersonal communication, we found that those in this study who liked spicy food were more extraverted and more easily angered than those who did not. In Experiment 2, we also found that people with sour taste preferences score higher on trait anger than those who do not. This indicates an embodied implication of sour taste leading to higher levels of anger. In fact, in Chinese, people use the phrase “love drinking vinegar” to describe women who are jealous and easily angered. To extend and improve our findings, future researchers should take into account the limitations in our study and help resolve these issues. First, our data were collected using self-reported flavor preferences rather than an objective measure, such as 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) tests (Tepper & Ullrich, 2002). Instead of using a trait anger scale or a single item to measure irritability, a standard personality scale such as the Big Five Inventory could be preferable. 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