Does a Sensitive Palate Beget Sensitive Mmood? The Relation Between Supertasting and Disordered Mood

Van Meter, Anna

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March 22, 2019

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Van Meter, Anna
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract

Objective: Prevalence rates of bipolar disorder may be as high as 11% (Angst et al., 2003); currently, research is being conducted on biologically-based traits, with the goal to find ways to ascertain a person’s risk for bipolar disorder, or to lend greater certainty to a diagnosis. One trait of interest is an individual’s ability to taste phenothioureas, a family of bitter-tasting compounds (Wooding, 2006). The aim of the present study is to determine whether this taste sensitivity has utility as a biomarker for mood disorder risk and, if so, whether emotional reactivity and regulation moderate this relation. Method: Participants (N=499) were undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Participants completed a series of questionnaires related to their mood, emotion regulation, and family history of psychiatric disorder. Next, participants completed a mood induction paradigm. Finally, participants’ taste sensitivity was measured. Results: Three groups, based on taste sensitivity, were identified. Ratings of hypomania, family history of psychiatric disorder, psychological treatment seeking, and emotion regulation did not differ across groups. Scores on the BDI were related to taste sensitivity (p<.05), but this relation was driven primarily by outliers. Using regression, tasting predicted stronger responses to both positive and negative mood inductions (p<.05). Additionally, the interaction of negative emotion regulation and tasting predicted weaker responses to the mood inductions. Finally, emotion regulation strategies were predictive of both depression and hypomania scores (p<.05). Testing the effect sizes against the zone of indifference (r= ±0.2), only the emotion regulation strategies showed promise as predictors of mood disorder. Discussion: The present study represents the largest sample investigating mood and supertasting. Therefore, the low – or absent – effect size of taste sensitivity in the present analyses sheds doubt on the utility of taste sensitivity as a biomarker for mood disorder risk. However, there were trends to suggest that supertasters are more sensitive to their environment than nontasters and that they may have increased risk for depression. Additionally, taste – or threat – sensitivity may interact with negative emotion regulation strategies in intriguing ways. Future studies, using a clinical sample, may help to better elaborate the trends found in this study.

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