Drinking your coffee black might be the healthiest way to get caffeine, but it might also be a sign that you're a total monster—at least according to a new study, which finds that people who prefer bitter tastes are more likely to have psychopathic personality traits.

Researchers from the University of Innsbruck in Austria studied 953 American adults with an average age of 35. The participants reported which foods they liked best through a survey, and then answered several personality questionnaires, which measured qualities like narcissism, aggression, psychopathy, and "everyday sadism," or the tendency to enjoy inflicting pain on others, whether vicariously or not. (Think a high-school bully, or basically anyone who works at the DMV.)

The results, set to be published in the journal Appetite, show that people who said they liked bitter tastes were more likely to report "malevolent personality traits," even when controlling for sweet, sour, and salty tastes. Bitter foods included coffee, radishes, beer, tonic water, and celery. Compared to other flavors, bitterness was the biggest predictor of psychopathic personality traits.

Want to hang out with nicer people? Participants who scored high on "agreeableness" tended to love sweet foods, like candy and chocolate cake, and hate bitter foods. So if you spot someone loading up on sugar at your local coffee shop, befriend them. They may be sweet in more ways than one.

From: Delish

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