Skip to main content
Original Article

Dispositional Properties of Metaphor

The Predictive Power of the Sweet Taste Metaphor for Trait and Daily Prosociality

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000234

Abstract. Metaphors often characterize prosocial actions and people as sweet. Three studies sought to explore whether conceptual metaphors of this type can provide insights into the prosocial trait of agreeableness and into daily life prosociality. Study 1 (n = 698) examined relationships between agreeableness and food taste preferences. Studies 2 (n = 66) and 3 (n = 132) utilized daily diary protocols. In Study 1, more agreeable people liked sweet foods to a greater extent. In Study 2, greater sweet food preferences predicted a stronger positive relationship between daily prosocial behaviors and positive affect, a pattern consistent with prosocial motivation. Finally, Study 3 found that daily prosocial feelings and behaviors varied positively with sweet food consumption in a manner that could not be ascribed to positive affect or self-control. Altogether, the findings encourage further efforts to extend conceptual metaphor theory to the domain of personality processes, in part by building on balance-related ideas.

References

  • Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Asch, S. E. (1958). The metaphor: A psychological inquiry. In R. TagiuriL. PetrulloEds., Person perception and interpersonal behavior (pp. 86–94). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., & de Vries, R. E. (2014). The HEXACO Honesty-Humility, agreeableness, and emotionality factors: A review of research and theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 139–152. doi: 10.1177/1088868314523838 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Ashton, M. C., Pilkington, A. C., & Lee, K. (2014). Do prosocial people prefer sweet-tasting foods? An attempted replication of Meier, Moeller, Riemer-Peltz, and Robinson (2012). Journal of Research in Personality, 52, 42–46. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2014.06.006 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Baumann, D. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Kenrick, D. T. (1981). Altruism as hedonism: Helping and self-gratification as equivalent responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 1039–1046. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.40.6.1039 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Baumeister, R. F., & Heatherton, T. F. (1996). Self-regulation failure: An overview. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 1–15. doi: 10.1207/s15327965pli0701_1 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Bolger, N., Davis, A., & Rafaeli, E. (2003). Diary methods: Capturing life as it is lived. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 579–616. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145030 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Brunstein, J. C., Schultheiss, O. C., & Grässman, R. (1998). Personal goals and emotional well-being: The moderating role of motive dispositions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 494–508. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.494 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Caprara, G. V., Alessandri, G., Di Giunta, L., Panerai, L., & Eisenberg, N. (2010). The contribution of agreeableness and self-efficacy beliefs to prosociality. European Journal of Personality, 24, 36–55. doi: 10.1002/per.739 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Chan, K. Q., Tong, E. M. W., Tan, D. H., & Koh, A. H. Q. (2013). What do love and jealousy taste like? Emotion, 13, 1142–1149. doi: 10.1037/a0033758 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Conner, M. T., Haddon, A. H., Pickering, E. S., & Booth, D. A. (1988). Sweet tooth demonstrated: Individual differences in preference for both sweet foods and foods highly sweetened. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 275–280. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.73.2.275 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Conner, T. S., Tennen, H., Fleeson, W., & Barrett, L. F. (2009). Experience sampling methods: A modern idiographic approach to personality research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 292–313. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00170.x First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Crandall, C. S., Silvia, P. J., N’Gbala, A. N., Tsang, J., & Dawson, K. (2007). Balance theory, unit relations, and attribution: The underlying integrity of Heiderian theory. Review of General Psychology, 11, 12–30. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.11.1.12 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Crawford, L. E. (2009). Conceptual metaphors of affect. Emotion Review, 1, 129–139. doi: 10.1177/1754073908100438 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Cvencek, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2012). Balanced identity theory: Review of evidence for implicit consistency in social cognition. In B. GawronskiF. StrackEds., Cognitive consistency: A fundamental principle in social cognition (pp. 157–177). New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Cvencek, D., Kapur, M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Math achievement, stereotypes, and math self-concepts among elementary-school students in Singapore. Learning and Instruction, 39, 1–10. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2015.04.002 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Drewnowski, A. (1997). Taste preferences and food intake. Annual Review of Nutrition, 17, 237–253. doi: 10.1146/annurev.nutr.17.1.237 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Enders, C. K., & Tofighi, D. (2007). Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel models: A new look at an old issue. Psychological Methods, 12, 121–138. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.12.2.121 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Ernst, M., & Spear, L. P. (2009). Reward systems. In M. de HaanM. R. GunnarEds., Handbook of developmental social neuroscience (pp. 324–341). New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Fleeson, W. (2007). Studying personality processes: Explaining change in between-persons longitudinal and within-person multilevel models. In R. W. RobinsR. C. FraleyR. F. KruegerEds., Handbook of research methods in personality psychology (pp. 523–542). New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Forgas, J. P. (1999). On feeling good and being rude: Affective influences on language use and request formations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 928–939. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.928 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gailliot, M. T. (2010). The effortful and energy-demanding nature of prosocial behavior. In M. MikulincerP. R. ShaverEds., Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature (pp. 169–180). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Gawronski, B. (2012). Back to the future of dissonance theory: Cognitive consistency as a core motive. Social Cognition, 30, 652–668. doi: 10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.652 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gawronski, B., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Becker, A. P. (2007). I like it, because I like myself: Associative self-anchoring and post-decisional change of implicit evaluations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 221–232. doi: 10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.652 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gebauer, J. E., Riketta, M., Broemer, P., & Maio, G. R. (2008). Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 399–420. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2007.07.002 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Gilead, M., Gal, O., Polak, M., & Cholow, Y. (2015). The role of nature and nurture in conceptual metaphors: The case of gustatory priming. Social Psychology, 46, 167–173. doi: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000238 First citation in articleLinkGoogle Scholar

  • Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26–42. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. MervieldeI. DearyF. De FruytF. OstendorfEds., Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7–28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gow, A. J., Whiteman, M. C., Pattie, A., & Deary, I. J. (2005). Goldberg’s “IPIP” Big-Five factor markers: Internal consistency and concurrent validity in Scotland. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 317–329. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.011 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Gray, K. (2012). The power of good intentions: Perceived benevolence soothes pain, increases pleasure, and improves taste. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 639–645. doi: 10.1177/1948550611433470 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Graziano, W. G., & Eisenberg, N. (1997). Agreeableness: A dimension of personality. In R. HoganJ. A. JohnsonS. R. BriggsEds., Handbook of personality (pp. 795–824). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M., Sheese, B. E., & Tobin, R. M. (2007). Agreeableness, empathy, and helping: A person × situation perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 583–599. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.583 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., & Mellott, D. S. (2002). A unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Psychological Review, 109, 3–25. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.109.1.3 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Habashi, M. M., Graziano, W. G., & Hoover, A. E. (2016). Searching for the prosocial personality: A Big Five approach to linking personality and prosocial behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 1177–1192. doi: 10.1177/0146167216652859 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. PervinO. P. JohnEds., Handbook of personality psychology: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Kövecses, Z. (1988). The language of love: The semantics of passion in conversational English. Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell University Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Lakoff, G. (1986). A figure of thought. Metaphor & Symbolic Activity, 1, 215–225. doi: 10.1207/s15327868ms0103_4 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh. New York, NY: Basic Books. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Landau, M. J., Meier, B. P., & Keefer, L. A. (2010). A metaphor-enriched social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1045–1067. doi: 10.1037/a0020970 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Landau, M. J., Robinson, M. D., & Meier, B. P. (2014). Introduction. In M. LandauM. D. RobinsonB. P. MeierEds., The power of metaphor: Examining its influence on social life (pp. 3–16). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Lee, S. W. S., & Schwarz, N. (2012). Bidirectionality, mediation, and moderation of metaphorical effects: The embodiment of social suspicion and fishy smells. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 737–749. doi: 10.1037/a0029708 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lippa, R. (1991). Some psychometric characteristics of gender diagnosticity measures: Reliability, validity, consistency across domains, and relationship to the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 1000–1011. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.61.6.1000 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Lucas, R. E., & Donnellan, M. B. (2014). Agreeableness and preference for sweet tastes. Retrieved from open science framework. Osf.io/w72zj First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Meier, B. P., Moeller, S. K., Riemer-Peltz, M., & Robinson, M. D. (2012). Sweet taste preferences and experiences predict prosocial inferences, personalities, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 163–174. doi: 10.1037/a0025253 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Meier, B. P., Schnall, S., Schwarz, N., & Bargh, J. A. (2012). Embodiment in social psychology. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, 705–716. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01212.x First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Miller, J. D., Gaughan, E. T., Maples, J., & Price, J. (2011). A comparison of Agreeableness scores from the Big Five Inventory and the NEO PI-R: Consequences for the study of Narcissism and Psychopathy. Assessment, 18, 335–339. doi: 10.1177/1073191111411671 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Moskowitz, D. S. (1994). Cross-situational generality and the interpersonal circumplex. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 921–933. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.66.5.921 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002). Math = male, me = female, therefore math ≠ me. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 44–59. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.83.1.44 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Nosek, B. A., Spies, J. R., & Motyl, M. (2012). Scientific utopia: II. Restructuring incentives and practices to promote truth over publishability. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 615–631. doi: 10.1177/1745691612459058 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Pelham, B. W., Carvallo, M., & Jones, J. T. (2005). Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 106–110. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00344.x First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Penner, L. A., Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., & Schroeder, D. A. (2005). Prosocial behavior: Multilevel perspectives. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 365–392. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070141 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Penner, L. A., Fritzsche, B. A., Craiger, J. P., & Freifeld, T. S. (1995). Measuring the prosocial personality. In J. N. ButcherC. D. SpielbergerEds., Advances in personality assessment (Vol. 10, pp. 147–163). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Plomin, R., & Asbury, K. (2005). Nature and nurture: Genetic and environmental influences on behavior. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 600, 86–98. doi: 10.1177/0002716205277184 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Preacher, K. J., Curran, P. J., & Bauer, D. J. (2006). Computational tools for probing interactions in multiple linear regression, multilevel modeling, and latent curve analysis. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 31, 437–448. doi: 10.3102/10769986031004437 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Ren, D., Tan, K., Arriaga, X. B., & Chan, K. Q. (2015). Sweet love: The effects of sweet taste experience on romantic perceptions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 32, 905–921. doi: 10.1177/0265407514554512 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Robinson, M. D., & Wilkowski, B. M. (2015). Personality processes and processes as personality: A cognitive perspective. In M. MikulincerP. R. ShaverL. M. CooperR. LarsenEds., APA handbook of personality and social psychology (pp. 129–145). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Rudenga, K. J., & Small, D. M. (2013). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex response to concentrated sucrose reflects liking rather than sweet quality coding. Chemical Senses, 38, 585–594. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjt029 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Sagioglou, C., & Greitemeyer, T. (2016). Individual differences in bitter taste preferences are associated with antisocial personality traits. Appetite, 96, 299–308. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.09.031 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Schlosser, A. E. (2015). The sweet taste of gratitude: Feeling grateful increases choice and consumption of sweets. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 561–576. doi: 10.1016/j.jcps.2015.02.006 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R., & Reis, H. T. (1996). What makes for a good day? Competence and autonomy in the day and in the person. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1270–1279. doi: 10.1177/01461672962212007 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Simon, D., & Holyoak, K. J. (2002). Structural dynamics of cognition: From consistency theories to constrain satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 283–294. doi: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0604_03 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Singer, J. D. (1998). Using SAS PROC MIXED to fit multilevel models, hierarchical models, and individual growth models. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 23, 323–355. doi: 10.3102/10769986023004323 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Tangney, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Boone, A. L. (2004). Higher self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–322. doi: 10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00263.x First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Watson, D. (2000). Mood and temperament. New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Wheeler, S. C., DeMarree, K. G., & Petty, R. E. (2007). Understanding the role of the self in prime-to-behavior effects: The active-self account. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 234–261. doi: 10.1177/1088868307302223 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Wiggins, J. S., & Trapnell, P. D. (1996). A dyadic-interactional perspective on the five-factor model. In J. S. WigginsEd., The five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 88–162). New York, NY: Guilford Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Wiggins, J. S., Trapnell, P., & Phillips, N. (1988). Psychometric and geometric characteristics of the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R). Multivariate Behavioral Research, 23, 517–530. doi: 10.1207/s15327906mbr2304_8 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Williamson, G. M., & Clark, M. S. (1989). Providing help and desired relationship type as determinants of changes in moods and self-evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 722–734. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.56.5.722 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Woodcock, A., Graziano, W. G., Branch, S. E., Habashi, M. M., Ngambeki, I., & Evangelou, D. (2013). Person and thing orientations: Psychological correlates and predictive validity. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 116–123. doi: 10.1177/1948550612444320 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Yu, K., Anyanwu, I., Butler, L., Dashiell, C., Ezzell, L., Hagler, M., … Warfield, C. (2013). A matter of taste: Gustatory sensations influence personality judgments. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social and Community Studies, 7, 25–33. doi: 10.18848/2324-7576/CGP/v07i01/53508 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Zaki, J., Lopez, G., & Mitchell, J. (2014). Activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex covaries with revealed social preferences: Evidence for person-invariant value. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 464–469. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst005 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. P. (2013). Intuitive prosociality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 466–470. doi: 10.1177/0963721413492764 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar

  • Zhong, C., & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science, 313, 1451–1452. doi: 10.1126/science.1130726 First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar