By What can a few drops of lemon juice tell you about your personality? Here we tell you.
Hans Jürgen Eysenck was the first author to include the dimension “introversion/extraversion” in his factorial model of personality. He also created numerous personality tests to assess the dimensions of his model. Can you imagine Eysenck’s face when he found out, after having created many tests, that one of “his” dimensions can be measured with a few drops of juice, as the lemon test does?
You can easily perform this test at home. All you need is a cotton swab, a piece of string, and some lemon juice. It will take a couple of minutes. And not only can it tell you whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, but it can also determine your level of empathy!
How to perform the lemon test
The first thing you should do is take the cotton swab and tie the thread around the middle of it, so that you can suspend it in the air. Once you have done this, place one end of the cotton swab on your tongue for twenty seconds. Next, put five drops of lemon juice on your tongue and swallow. Then, place the other end of the cotton swab on your tongue for another twenty seconds.
The next thing you need to do is, as you take it out of your mouth, hold it in the air by holding the string. The point is to see which of the two ends is heavier. The stick will probably spin around and you’ll end up getting confused about which end you put in before and after the juice. For this reason, we advise you to make a different coloured mark on each end before you start.
When you suspend the swab in the air, two things can happen: the end that you placed on it after applying the drops of juice will weigh more and the swab will tilt; or, on the contrary, it will remain horizontal. If it remains horizontal, it means that you are an extrovert . However, if the swab tilts towards the wet end after the juice, it means that you are an introvert .
Interpretation of the results for the introversion/extraversion dimension
What does it mean that the juice side weighs more? It means that you have salivated more over the lemon juice than an extrovert. But let’s see why this happens.
Eysenck believed that one of the basic differences between introverts and extroverts was found in physiology, in the basal level of cortical activation. He believed that extroverts have a chronically low level of cortical activation and, therefore, seek high-intensity stimulation to compensate for their low activation. In addition, they tend to respond less intensely to stimuli.
«Extroverts are characterized by sociability, impulsiveness, disinhibition, vitality, optimism and quick wit»
―Hans Eysenck―
In contrast, according to Eysenck, introverts have a higher basal activation , and they therefore prefer quieter or solitary activities and softer stimuli to keep their high activation “at bay”. Introverts tend to respond more intensely to stimuli. This is what he called the cortical activation theory.
Translating it to lemon and for the sake of understanding: let’s consider lemon juice as a medium intensity stimulus. An extrovert, when faced with a medium intensity stimulus, will not experience great activation, that is, he will not salivate much, since he needs more powerful stimulation. On the other hand, an introvert will tend to respond much more intensely, salivating more than an extrovert .
The explanation seems logical. And this tendency of introverts to react more intensely than extroverts to certain sensory stimuli has been observed. However, it has not been possible to demonstrate that introverts had a higher level of basal cortical activation than extroverts .
So, if you thought that a lemon was going to reveal great secrets about your personality , you were wrong , just like its famous creator. What it can do is show how sensitive you are to stimuli and how intensely you respond to them.
What can the lemon test tell us about our level of empathy?
In a study published in Psychiatry Research , they experimented to measure people’s degree of empathy. The experiment consisted of watching videos with cotton balls in their mouths. In one of the videos, the protagonist was doing an exercise of moving colored balls from one place to another. In the other video, the protagonist was seen cutting a lemon and eating it.
The results showed, first of all, that the participants salivated more when watching the video in which the subject eats the lemon. This occurs due to “autonomic resonance”, which is the tendency to unconsciously and automatically imitate the physiological states of other people.
This ability is determined by the activity of our magnificent mirror neurons , an activity that goes far beyond making us yawn when others yawn.
Secondly, they found that not only do we salivate more when watching another person eat, but also that not everyone does so with the same intensity. More empathetic people salivated in greater amounts than less empathetic people.
Experimenting on your own wouldn’t make much sense, as there is no standard amount of saliva that an empathetic person emits. But you could do it with other people to compare the results. You might be surprised!
For the curious…
At the beginning of the article I invited you to imagine Eysenck’s face when he found out about this test that few professionals consider valid. The most curious thing is that it was Eysenck himself and his wife Sybil who, in 1960, carried out this test for the first time . Although the truth is that they used slightly more “professional” materials.
The objective of the test was to test the theory of cortical activation , which is precisely what explains why the lemon test works.
As we have seen, this test is not going to reveal our deepest secrets, but it can give us clues about how sensitive we are , both to a stimulus and to the physiological states of the people we observe or are around. I invite you to do the experiment and check if what your saliva says is similar to what you think about yourself.