From Your Mouth To Your Eyes

Recent research has shown that the preference of people’s taste can be effective predict the social cognition and personality traits of one person.For example,the preference of spicy food can not only predict the individual’s aggressive personality traits,but also involve the individual’s behavioral immune function.Previous studies have suggested that aggressiveness is related to the perception of anger,and the activation of individual immune system is related to the perception of disgust.Therefore,spicy food may affect the perception process of the expression of anger and disgust.Based on the theories of embodied cognition and behavioral immunity,this study investigated the effects of spicy food on emotional perception from the perspectives of spicy food preference and instant experience,with researching the mediation of aggression trait and behavioral immune activation.In the study 1,XAB perceptual discrimination task and forced choice recognition task were used to investigate the relationship between the preference of spicy food and perception of anger and disgust.The XAB task examined the process of participants identified the expressions with different emotional intensity in a morph expression continuum,and the forced choice recognition task examined how the subjects recognized the emotional category of a mixed expression.The stimulus material was continuum of progressively angry-sadness,disgusted-sadness expressions with emotional intensity varying from 0% to 100%,and the physical difference between adjacent expressions was 10%.To eliminate the possibility of the preferences of spicy food related to other facial expression except to the expression of anger and disgust,study 2 used the happy-sadness and fear-sadness gradient expression continuum as new stimulus material based on the study 1,and XAB tasks was used to research the relationship between the preference of spicy food and anger and disgust expression.The Buss-Perry scale and Perceived Vulnerability to disease scale were used to investigate the effects of the aggressive traits and vulnerability to disease as mediating variables.From the perspective of perceptual emotional congruent expression(that is,from a certain expression to a neutral expression),the study 3 further studied the effect of consuming the spicy food on the perception of anger and disgust,as well as the mediating effect of aggressive state and behavioral immune system was researched.The result of study 1 shows that the preference of spicy food has a positive predictive effect on the accuracy of anger and disgust expressions,but the predictive effect of the preference spicy food on the sensitivity and response bias of the expressions is not significant.The results of the study 2 showed that the preference of spicy food of individual had no significant predictive effect on the accuracy of happy and fear expressions.However,the preference of spicy food of individual can positively predicted aggressive traits,and aggressive traits of individual positively predicted the discrimination accuracy of angry expressions.After controlling the vulnerability to disease,the preference of spicy food had a significant positive prediction effect on the discrimination accuracy of the expressions of angry,which was mediated by aggression traits.The preference of spicy food can also positively predict the vulnerability to disease,and the vulnerability to disease positively predicts the discrimination accuracy of disgust expressions.After controlling aggression traits,the preference of spicy food significantly predicted the discrimination accuracy of disgust expressions through the mediating effect of the vulnerability to disease.The results of study 3 showed that the instant intake experience of spicy food promotes the perception of anger,disgust,fear and happy,making individuals more sensitive to these four expressions.Moreover,consuming the spicy food,mediated by the state of aggression,promotes the sensitive recognition of the expression of anger.These results suggest that spiciness,a common taste experience,has a shaping effect on human emotional perception.This study provides some useful references for deepening people’s understanding of emotional perception and further research on the relationship between body and mind.