The Lemon Juice Experiment-Introvert vs Extrovert

The amount of saliva you produce after putting a drop of lemon juice on your tongue might tell you something about your personality.

It’s to do with a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) which responds to stimuli like food, or social contact. For example, it controls the amount of saliva you produce in response to food. A good food stimulus is lemon juice. Squeezing lemon juice on to your tongue makes your mouth water, and it does this because your RAS is responding to the lemon juice.

Scientists now think introverts have increased activity in their RAS and therefore increased production of saliva. The theory is that the RAS in introverts has a high level of activity, even when it isn’t being stimulated. So it only needs a small stimulus to produce a large response. This means that introverts are likely to produce a large amount of saliva in response to lemon juice. But because the RAS also reacts to social contact, introverts react more strongly to meeting people too.

In extraverts, on the other hand, there is a low level of activity in the RAS when it isn’t stimulated, so they require a much larger stimulus to generate a response. So they usually produce less saliva in response to lemon juice than introverts, but are more comfortable with social contact.

Try this simple test with your friends and family and compare your results.

The Test

You will need:

* Lemon juice
* Kitchen scales
* Cotton wool balls

This is what you need to do:

* Put a large drop of lemon juice on your tongue and swill it around your mouth for ten seconds
* Use the cotton wool balls to mop up all the saliva that you produce
* When you’ve mopped it all up, put the cotton wool balls on your kitchen scales and see how much they weigh
* Compare your results with your friends and family, and see whose weighs the most

We expect that you will find:

* That introverts produce a lot of saliva in response to lemon juice
* That extraverts don’t produce much saliva in response to lemon juice

Now try our personality test and our ‘necker cube’ experiment to see if they say you are more of an extravert or an introvert. And to find out whether the results from the lemon juice experiment tally up.

In this test, the introverts produced 50% more saliva than the extraverts. But it’s worth bearing in mind that there are lots of other factors that affect saliva production, such as time of day and how thirsty you are.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ science/humanbody/mind/articles/personalityandindividuality/lemons.shtml

Do Opposites Attract Or Do Birds Of A Feather Flock Together?

Do people tend to select romantic partners that are similar to them or opposite to them? And does spouse similarity lead to marital happiness? In one of the most comprehensive studies ever undertaken on these questions, researchers at the University of Iowa find that people tend to marry those who are similar in attitudes, religion and values. However, it is similarity in personality that appears to be more important in having a happy marriage.
Psychologist Eva C. Klohnen, Ph.D., and graduate student Shanhong Luo, M.A., of the University of Iowa looked at assortative mating issues (mating based on similar or opposite characteristics) among 291 newlyweds who had participated in the Iowa Marital Assessment Project. The newlyweds had been married less than a year at the time the study began and had dated each other for an average of three and a half years. The couples were assessed on a broad range of personality characteristics, attitudes and relationship quality indicators.

Results show that couples were highly similar on attitudes and values; however, they had little or no above-chance similarity on personality-related domains such as attachment, extraversion, conscientiousness and positive or negative emotions. There is no evidence that opposites attract. What is most intriguing is that when the researchers assessed marital quality and happiness, they found that personality similarity was related to marital satisfaction, but attitude similarity was not.

"People may be attracted to those who have similar attitudes, values, and beliefs and even marry them – at least in part – on the basis of this similarity because attitudes are highly visible and salient characteristics and they are fundamental to the way people lead their lives," explain the authors. Personality-related characteristics, on the other hand, take much longer to be known and to be accurately perceived and are not likely to play a more substantial role until later in the relationship, they add.

"However, once people are in a committed relationship, it is primarily personality similarity that influences marital happiness because being in a committed relationship entails regular interaction and requires extensive coordination in dealing with tasks, issues and problems of daily living. Whereas personality similarity is likely to facilitate this process, personality differences may result in more friction and conflict in daily life," say the authors. "As far as attitudes are concerned, people who chose to marry each other should be well aware of how similar or different they are on these domains because attitudes are very visible and salient. This suggests that attitudinal and value differences, when they exist, are part of a conscious decision to stay together on the basis of other important considerations, according to Luo and Klohnen.

Given that their research indicates that similarity in attitudes and values may play a different role in relationship development than does personality similarity, Luo and Klohnen suggest that future research should examine how similarity in different domains are related to relationship outcomes for couples in earlier and later stages of relationship development.

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Article: "Assortative Mating and Marital Quality in Newlyweds: A Couple-Centered Approach," Shanhong Luo and Eva C. Klohnen, University of Iowa; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 88, No. 2.

Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office or at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp882304.pdf

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050213191438.htm#