Relationship as Seen from Perspectives of Both Gender and Individual Personality to the Subjective Comfortable Feeling for the Taste and Smell of Chocolate

Abstract

The aim of this study was to clarify the relationship between individual personality and the subjective comfortable feeling caused by tasting chocolate. Seventeen male subjects (24.1±2.56 years old) and seventeen female subjects (23.7±3.16 years old) took the personality tests (Japanese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the brief questionnaire for detection of type A tendency, and the Japanese version of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)) and tasted five different kinds of chocolate, which were : 1) milk chocolate (MK), 2) chocolate with additional sweetener (SW), 3) chocolate with additional theobromine (BT), 4) chocolate with additional citric acid (SC), 5) chocolate with extract of oak wood (OK). The subjective comfortable feeling was measured by using a scale with 13 divisions, with the adjective pair of “very comfortable” and “very uncomfortable” on each end. Control (CT) was conducted by not asking the person to taste anything. The results were as follows : In the female subjects, 1) The comfortable feeling was significantly higher than that of the male subjects, especially in BT. 2) The masculinity and the femininity had significant positive effects on the comfortable feeling. In the male subjects, 1) The type A tendency had a significant positive effect and the trait-anxiety had a significant negative effect on the comfortable feeling. By investigating the relationship between personality and comfortable feeling in each kind of chocolate, 1) The femininity of the male subjects and the comfortable feeling of OK, and 2) The masculinity of the female subjects and the comfortable feelings of OK and SW showed significant correlation. It is considered useful to investigate people's personalities when discussing individual differences in chocolate preference.