Spice up the moment: The influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time

Abstract

Embodied cognition contends that sensorimotor experiences undergird cognitive processes. Three embodied cross-domain metaphorical mappings constitute quintessential illustrations: spatial navigation and orientation underpin the conceptualization of time and emotion and gustatory sensation underlies the formulation of emotion. Threading together these strands of insights, the present research consisted of three studies explored the potential influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time. The results revealed a positive correlation between spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor for time such that individuals who enjoyed spicy taste (Study 1) and who consumed spicy (vs. salty) snack (Study 2) exhibited a predilection for the ego-moving perspective when cognizing a temporally ambiguous event. Because both spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor are associated with anger and approach motivation, the latter two were postulated to be related to the novel taste-time relationship. Corroborative evidence for the hypothesis was found, which indicated that spicy (vs. salty) intake elicited significantly stronger anger toward and significantly greater approach-motivated perception of a rescheduled temporal event (Study 3). Taken together, the current findings demonstrate that spicy taste may play a role in people's perspectives on the movement of events in time and highlight the involved embodied interrelation between language, emotion, and cognition.

Keywords

spatiotemporal metaphors spicy taste anger approach motivation embodied cognition

The central tenet of embodied cognition asserts that higher-order cognitive processing is firmly grounded in the organic simulations of sensory, motor, and affective experiences (Ale et al., 2022; Barsalou, 2008; Fini et al., 2023; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Leitan & Chaffey, 2014; Ostarek & Bottini, 2021; Shapiro, 2014; Wilson, 2002). In simpler terms, mental representation of abstract concepts depends on bodily states and experiences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). A prototype of such embodied construal is the spatial substratum of temporal conceptualization (Bender & Beller, 2014; Boroditsky, 2000; Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; Moore, 2017) that finds universal prevalence (Khatin-Zadeh et al., 2023). Linguistically, for example, Mandarin Chinese and English rely on two quotidian spatial metaphors to conceptualize the movement of temporal events in relation to the experiencer (i.e., the deictic time). One is labeled as the ego-moving metaphor, where the observer envisions themselves as making a move for a certain stationary future event; the other is styled as the time-moving metaphor, where some future event is personified as wending its way toward a stationary observer (Clark, 1973). “临近年关 (We are approaching the end of the year)” and “岁末将至 (The end of the year is approaching us)” are corresponding instantiations of the dual metaphorical perspectives on time. Importantly, this perspectival duet is not just language-deep but psychologically real. In one inventive study, McGlone and Harding (1998) primed participants with straightforward context sentences framed from either the ego-moving perspective (e.g., We are coming up on the party in two days) or the time-moving perspective (e.g., The party is coming up in two days) before asking them to interpret an ambiguous target statement that read, “The next Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward two days. When is the meeting now that it has been moved?” The locus of the ambiguity consists in the adverb “forward,” the implied direction of which is subject to the reader's temporal perspective. If the direction of forward movement in time is assumed to be toward the future, it denotes that the meeting has been rescheduled to be later than the original Wednesday, that is, Friday. Conversely, if the direction of forward movement in time is assumed to be toward the past, it signifies that the meeting has been rescheduled to be earlier than the original Wednesday, that is, Monday. Because the ego-moving perspective-framed sentences imply that the temporal movement is toward the future (e.g., We are coming up on the party in two days implies that we are moving toward a future event that is yet to come) whilst the time-moving perspective-framed sentences imply that the temporal movement is toward the past (e.g., The party is coming up in two days implies that the party is moving from the future and past us into the past), “Friday” and “Monday” interpretation corresponds to the taking of the ego-moving perspective and the time-moving perspective respectively (McGlone & Harding, 1998). It was predicted that if people accessed the perspectives embedded in the unambiguous temporal sentences, such perspectival entailments should be activated and recycled in the interpretation of a subsequent ambiguous statement. Conforming to this prediction, the results showed that the target temporal statement was disambiguated in a prime-consistent manner such that participants primed with the ego/time-moving perspective-framed context sentences interpreted the meeting to be rescheduled to “Friday”/“Monday” (McGlone & Harding, 1998: Study 2). The finding that the ego-moving perspective and the time-moving perspective are accessed and utilized in processing temporal information thus demonstrates that these two metaphorical perspectives are cognitively real. Extending this seminal finding and employing the same temporal disambiguation paradigm (i.e., “Next Wednesday's meeting” statement), a growing accretion of factors has been uncovered to exert a modulatory effect on people's metaphorical perspectives on time (Bender & Beller, 2014; Feist & Duffy, 2023). For example, priming participants with actual motion by asking them to manually draw lines of different lengths, Ramscar et al. (2010: Experiment 1) found that the longer the drawn lines were, the more likely it was for the drawer to adopt the ego-moving perspective. By extension, because processing fictive motion requires mental simulation of actual motion (Matlock, 2004), being exposed to a fictive motion sentence (e.g., The tattoo runs along his spine) compared to a non-fictive equivalent (e.g., The tattoo is next to his spine) biased people in favor of the ego-moving perspective (Matlock et al., 2005: Experiment 1). The fact that forward motion in space leads to thought about forward motion in time (in line with the ego-moving perspective) (Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002) testifies to the spatial grounding of temporal conceptualization (Boroditsky, 2000).

Analogously, emotional concepts are also grounded in space (Lenci et al., 2018; Shapiro, 2014) and as such, emotion can provide cognitive assistance for and is generally engaged in the processing of abstract concepts (Vigliocco et al., 2014; Winter, 2023). With reference to the abstract domain of time in particular, contrary emotional states precipitate polar metaphorical perspectives on time (Margolies & Crawford, 2008; Zheng et al., 2019). To wit, when understanding the temporal ambiguity (McGlone & Harding, 1998), people who were induced to be happy were more likely to adopt the ego-moving perspective whereas those who were induced to be sad or anxious were more likely to adopt the time-moving perspective (Richmond et al., 2012: Study 4). This is because emotion is tightly interwoven with motivation that is typically categorized as approach-oriented or avoidance-oriented (Elliot et al., 2013). Motivation is fundamentally grounded in motion in space (Zheng et al., 2019) and approach motivation is grounded in forward motion whereas avoidance motivation is grounded in backward motion (Duffy & Feist, 2017). Given that people normally approach positively-valenced stimuli, that is, moving toward an object or situation akin to the ego-moving representation and avoid negatively-valenced stimuli, that is, moving away from an object or situation comparable to the time-moving representation (Kaczmarek et al., 2021; Li & Cao, 2020), the ego-moving metaphor is associated with positive affect and approach motivation whereas the time-moving metaphor is associated with negative affect and avoidance motivation (Richmond et al., 2012). Indeed, people tend to take the ego-moving perspective and be approach-motivated when processing an affectively positive event whilst opting more frequently for the alternative perspective and being avoidance-motivated when the situation is affectively negative (Lee & Ji, 2014; Margolies & Crawford, 2008; McGlone & Pfiester, 2009). Despite a multitude of extant research endorsing the positive valence of the ego-moving metaphor and the negative valence of the time-moving metaphor (e.g., Richmond et al., 2012), this pairing is not without exception. On account of the fact that anger produces the urge to move in the direction of the anger stimulus (Hortensius et al., 2012) and thus features approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009), it is also linked to the ego-moving perspective via shared embodied simulation of approach-directed motion despite being a negatively-valenced emotion.

In another line of inquiry, in accordance with the conceptual metaphor theory that one more concrete domain can ground and guide the understanding of the other more abstract concept through metaphorical mapping (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Landau & Keefer, 2014; Landau et al., 2010; Thibodeau et al., 2019), emotion is metaphorically transferred from and conceptually rooted in physical sensation (Kövecses, 2020; Müller et al., 2022), with gustatory sensation in particular providing a common source of emotional articulation (Avery et al., 2022; Bredie et al., 2014; Gayler & Sas, 2017; Gayler et al., 2019; Liang et al., 2021; Zhou & Tse, 2022). For example, based on the oft-heard metaphorical endearments between romantic partners such as “sweetie” and “honey,” Ren et al. (2015) found that activating the concept of sweet taste would make the concept of romantic love more accessible. Specifically, they observed that participants who had consumed sweet drink tended to evaluate a hypothetical relationship more receptively and express greater interest in starting a relationship with a potential partner than those who drank distilled water. On the other hand, in consistence with bitter stimulus being evolutionarily translated into an anti-survival signal and emotionally connoted by unpleasantness, study showed that exposure to a bitter beverage (vs. mineral water) increased hostile affect and behavioral intention (Sagioglou & Greitemeyer, 2014). In a recent systematic inspection of metaphorical association between tastes and emotion and emotion-laden concepts, Zhou and Tse (2020) found that spicy taste-related words were rated as having the strongest metaphorical association with emotion words of anger. Empirical evidence for the spicy-anger link is noted in an earlier study. Starting from the expression “spicy girl” that metaphorically portrays a female's fiery temperament as spicy, Ji et al. (2013) unveiled a bidirectional relationship between spicy taste and trait anger such that strangers who stated a preference for spicy food were judged to be more susceptible to anger than those who expressed a liking for items of other tastes (e.g., sour) and that people who were higher in trait anger were given to spicy food. Other than demonstrating that spicy taste can influence judgment in metaphor-consistent ways (Mukherjee et al., 2017), studies have also shown that spicy taste can impact thinking via shared semantic overlap. To wit, both spicy taste and aggression are commonly associated with words such as hot (i.e., a rise in body temperature) and red (i.e., face turning red when getting angry or feeling oral burn) and empirical evidence is indicative of a relationship between the two such that regular consumers of spicy food displayed higher levels of trait aggression and that consumption of spicy food intensified cognition of aggressive intention in a target (Batra et al., 2017). Going beyond semantic intimations, spicy taste has elsewhere been found to predict risk seeking (Wang et al., 2016) and sensation seeking personality traits (Byrnes & Hayes, 2013; 2016). Given that risk taking and sensation seeking are both associated with aggression (Kolla et al., 2023; van Dongen et al., 2021) and that aggression is strongly linked to anger and is also approach-related (Bertsch et al., 2020; Harmon-Jones & Schutter, 2022), spicy taste is overall associated with anger and approach motivation.

Additionally, the weaker embodied view proposes that metaphors are embodied and repeated metaphoric use can shape cognitive processing (Boroditsky, 2000; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Thibodeau et al., 2019). There is no shortage of metaphorical utterances conventionalized in language that reflect the embodied catenations between spicy taste, anger and approach motivation. Inasmuch as people visually identify fire icons as the ideogram for spiciness in food design and packaging (Gil-Pérez et al., 2019), spicy and fire are perceptually interchangeable. Four-character Chinese idioms like “火冒三丈 (fire erupt thirty feet: to fly into a rage),” “怒火冲天 (anger fire charge heaven: to hit the roof),” “怒气冲冲 (anger air charge charge: to go ballistic)” instantiate respectively spicy (fire being its visual proxy)-anger, spicy-approach and anger-approach conceptual associations. Assuming the legitimacy of the weaker embodied account would lead to the expectation that the inveterate inculcation of the explicit linguistic nexuses between spicy, anger and approach motivation may very well facilitate the corresponding interconnections on the implicit level.

Uniting the two avenues of literature reviewed above, one on the spatial and emotional influence on temporal perspective preferences and one on the gustatory influence on emotional states, the aim of the current research was to investigate the role of taste, particularly that of spicy taste in shaping people's metaphorical perspectives on time. Given that spicy taste is linked to anger and approach motivation (Batra et al., 2017; Ji et al., 2013) and given that the ego-moving perspective of time is related to anger that shares with it the same approach-motivated behavioral tendency (Hauser et al., 2009; Zheng et al., 2019), we hypothesized that spicy taste would be associated with the ego-moving perspective because of a common link to spicy-evoked anger and the accompanying approach motivation.

To test this hypothesis, three studies were conducted. In Study 1, we explored whether spicy liking was related to the ego-moving perspective by comparing people's enjoyment of spicy taste with the perspectives adopted when deciphering the ambiguous “Next Wednesday's meeting” statement (Li, 2020; McGlone & Harding, 1998). To ascertain the robustness of the observational findings, Study 2 examined the causal relationship between spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective by contrasting the immediate effect of spicy ingestion with that of salty intake on the perspectives taken regarding the resolution of the same temporal ambiguity. The final study (Study 3) was a replication of Study 2 with a focus on spicy-evoked anger and approach motivation possibly contributing to the taste-time relationship.

Current Research

Study 1: Method

Participants

One hundred and four undergraduate and postgraduate students from a university in southwest China took part in the study (69 females, M_age: 20.70 years, SD: 0.86 years). All of them were Han Chinese from China's mainland. To compensate for their time, each was given a Diet Coke or a bar of Dove milk chocolate.

Materials and Procedure

Participants sat before desks in quiet classrooms and signed the informed consent document first. A dual-task questionnaire had been printed on an A4 copy paper. On one side of the paper was the first task, which asked the participants to give preference ratings to spicy taste and one of the five basic tastes, namely salty taste. The inclusion of the latter taste was to veil the fact that spicy taste was of real interest. Marking of taste liking was based on the 9-point Likert scale that was used in a recent study on food hedonic test, with “1” denoting “dislike extremely” and “9” indicating “like extremely” (García-Gómez et al., 2022). Participants were told that this task is designed to learn about their taste preference as a reference for the upcoming menu improvement by the canteen. On the flip side, the Chinese version modeled on the original temporal disambiguation paradigm (McGlone & Harding, 1998) was posed. Concretely, the question asked: “下周三的会议被移动了两天。移动后的会议改在哪天举行？(Next Wednesday's meeting has been moved two days. What day is the meeting now that it has been moved?) (Li, 2020).” Previous study using the literally translated paradigm that retains the adverb “forward” found that Mandarin monolinguals unanimously preferred the time-moving perspective and answered “Wednesday” (Lai & Boroditsky, 2013), an indication of the lack of ambiguity of the experimental question as Chinese speakers may habitually identify “前 (forward)” with temporal events being moved closer to where they are, evident in conventional phrases such as “提前 (carry front: bring to an earlier time)” (Li & Cao, 2020). This adverb-clipped probe, by eliminating the tendentious direction of movement, has been tried and tested in published studies with proven ambiguity among Mandarin Chinese speakers (Li & Cao, 2020; Zheng et al., 2019). As illustrated earlier, the ambiguity can be approached from either the ego-moving perspective and paraphrased into next “Friday” or the time-moving perspective and translated into next “Monday.” It was made explicitly clear that this question intends to gain a better understanding of university students’ time management and for this reason an instinctive and honest response is of great necessity. The two tasks were not numbered in a sequential order and therefore were fully counterbalanced as half of the participants started with the taste preference rating and the other half with the temporal perspective question. After finishing the tasks, the participants filled out their demographic details of age, gender, hometown, and ethnic background. To add credibility to the cover stories, participants subsequently wrote down their favorite food and gave a brief outline of their daily study routine on an extra piece of paper.

Results

Debriefing showed that none of the participants suspected the objective of the study as told. However, preliminary checks turned out six questionnaires where the temporal perspective task elicited an either-or answer, as a result of which, their responses were rendered invalid. The rest 98 samples (62 females, M_age: 20.69 years, SD: 0.88 years) were put in SPSS 25.0 for statistical analysis.

Taste Liking and Temporal Perspective Preference

Consistent with our hypothesis, a chi-square test of independence yielded a meaningful interaction between levels of taste enjoyment and temporal perspective preferences, with participants who adopted the ego-moving perspective by understanding the meeting to be postponed until next “Friday” averaging markedly stronger liking for spicy taste than those who adopted the time-moving perspective and judged the rescheduled meeting to be brought earlier to next “Monday,” χ2_{1, 98} = 13.529, p = .035, Cramer's V = 0.372 (Table 1). By contrast, the same analysis revealed no significant interaction between salty taste liking and temporal perspective preferences, χ2_{1, 98} = 3.787, p = .436, Cramer's V = 0.197.

Table 1.
Summary of results of Study 1 (N = 98) (standard deviations are presented within parentheses).

Time-moving perspective Ego-moving perspective Comparison

M (SD) M (SD) χ² p-value Cramer's V

Salty liking 5.255 (0.896) 5.059 (0.858) 3.787 .436 0.197

Spicy liking 4.936 (1.524) 6.020 (1.273) 13.529 .035 0.3720

Note. χ², p, Cramer's V values represent the Taste Liking × Temporal Perspective interaction.

The results of Study 1 therefore evinced an initial link between spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective. However, the fact that the study was observational in nature means that we cannot tell whether there exists a causal relationship, that is, whether exposure to spicy taste can lead to a propensity for the ego-moving perspective, as we did not control for confounding factors potentially at play. For instance, an earlier study found that university undergraduates who tended to procrastinate were more likely to adopt the ego-moving perspective (Duffy & Feist, 2014: Experiment 2). In the light of the participatory composition of the study, it was possible, albeit unlikely, that those who stated spicy taste preference also happened to be procrastinators. In order to ascertain the correlation observed in Study 1, Study 2 inquired into whether the immediate intake of spicy food can bias the taster in favor of the ego-moving perspective.

Study 2: Method

Participants

A printed document stating plainly that the study is about food sampling in which spicy food is involved and that only those who do not have spice allergies can sign up was distributed and read. Informed consent was obtained from each participant. A total of 240 undergraduate and postgraduate students (172 females, M_age: 20.82 years, SD: 1.77 years) from two universities in southwest China were recruited. All of them were Han Chinese from China's mainland and none of them had taken part in the previous study. Each was given two Dove milk chocolate bars in exchange for their participation.

Materials and Procedure

Participants were randomly and evenly assigned to the Salty condition (i.e., the control condition) and the Spicy condition (i.e., the experimental condition). The cover story was framed such that Brand A and Brand B potato chips were competing for a snack slot in the vending machines dotting the campus and they were invited to gauge their potential popularity. The truth was instead that the competitors were of one and the same brand and flavor that were used twice in separate conditions. Chips were repackaged in clear plastic zip bags to avoid brand identification. Participants sat in front of desks in quiet classrooms where paper plates of Brand A potato chips (so they were told) were prepared and a 4-page booklet laid out with each page hosting one task. In the Salty condition, the potato chips were of Original flavor and those in the Spicy condition were of Spicy Hot Pot flavor. Participants were first requested to chew at least three pieces slowly for about 90 s in order for the flavor to sink in. After ingesting the chips, participants evaluated the tastes with respect to the intensity of sweetness, saltiness, and spiciness. Added to the ratings of tastes were those of waviness and crispiness of the chips for both conditions. Including saltiness rating in the Spicy condition and vice versa was to ensure the discrimination of taste distinctiveness, that is, spicy/salty chips are spicier/saltier than salty/spicy chips. The incorporation of sweetness rating, being least relevant to spicy and salty snacks was for masking the taste of real interest, and so was the assessment of product characteristics. Based on the subjective rating scales of emotions and basic taste preferences used in a most recent cross-modal study (Guedes et al., 2023), scores were given from “1 = not at all” to “7 = very much so,” with higher number indicating stronger perceived taste and texture. Then in lieu of Brand A chips, Brand B chips (again so they were told) were presented in similar quantities. Participants were encouraged to relish the taste and texture of the chips for around 90 s before moving on to the second task, which was the same target time question used in Study 1 (Li, 2020). In the instruction, the subjective nature of the question was stressed and an intuitive answer demanded. The food-unrelated question was masqueraded as a way to help decide what time of the day would be best to restock the product in the vending machine. As before, this was followed up by a brief outline of participants’ daily study routine. Next, participants proceeded to the third task where they speculated the potential popularity of only the second sample, as it was the selfsame snack that was consumed twice, by selecting a number in keeping with the 7-point scoring rubric. Reckoning the prospective popularity served two purposes. One is to boost the credibility of the cover story, thereby perishing the thought to second-guess the real objective of the study; the other is to minimize the possibility of confounding the causation. To be more specific, because the stimulus is a particular snack (i.e., potato chips) that tastes spicy, rather than chili peppers or its spicy ingredient capsaicin (Xiang et al., 2022) that define spiciness, any significant effect to emerge might be imputed as much to the spiciness of the snack as to the spicy snack as a whole. Examining the relationship between popularity projection and temporal perspective preferences was necessary to disentangle the effect of spicy taste from the effect of spicy product. Finally, on the fourth and last page, participants filled out demographic information of age, gender, hometown and ethnic background.

Results

Debriefing showed that no participant was skeptical about the objective of the study as told. Preliminary checks found either missed ratings or an either-or response to the target time question by eight participants in the Spicy condition and six participants in the Salty condition. As a result, their answers were excluded, leaving altogether 226 sets of valid data (112 in the Spicy condition: 89 females, M_age: 20.95 years, SD: 1.85 years and 114 in the Salty condition: 83 females, M_age: 20.50 years, SD: 1.66 years) to be put in SPSS 25.0 for statistical analysis.

Manipulation Check

Manipulation check using paired-samples t-test showed that spiciness ratings were significantly higher than saltiness ratings in the Spicy condition, t = −45.480, p < .001, 95% CI = [−4.464, −4.090] whilst the opposite was true in the Salty condition, t = −44.031, p < .001, 95% CI = [−3.831, −3.502], indicating that taste manipulation and discrimination were successful.

Taste and Temporal Perspective Preference

Corroborating our hypothesis, a main significant effect of taste on the preferences of temporal perspective was found, as compared with those who tasted the salty-flavored potato chips, participants who consumed spicy-flavored potato chips were more likely to resolve the “Next Wednesday's meeting” ambiguity from the ego-moving perspective by thinking of the meeting as being put off until next “Friday.” More specifically, under half of the participants (46.49%) in the Salty condition responded next “Friday” (in accordance with the ego-moving perspective), which was not notably different from those who understood the rescheduled meeting to be brought forward to next “Monday” (in accordance with the time-moving perspective), Z = −0.656, p = .512 by a sign test. On the contrary, considerably more participants (59.8%) in the Spicy condition were inclined toward the ego-moving perspective and interpreted the rearranged meeting to be advanced to next “Friday,” which was significantly different from the rest who leaned toward the time-moving perspective and answered next “Monday,” Z = −1.984, p = .047 (Table 2). Revealed by a chi-square test of independence, this contrast was remarkable, χ2_{1, 226} = 4.031, p = .045, Cramer's V = 0.134. Finally, to determine whether there was a difference in spiciness ratings between participants with different temporal perspective preferences, we ran a binary logistic regression with spiciness ratings as the independent variable and temporal perspectives (time-moving perspective = 0; ego-moving perspective = 1) as the dependent variable. As hypothesized, the results showed that spiciness ratings were predictive of the ego-moving perspective, Waldχ² (1, N = 112) = 5.605, p = .018, 95% CI = [1.107, 2.935], manifest in the fact that participants who judged the potato chips to be spicier were prone in higher frequency to the ego-moving perspective, χ²_{1, 112} = 8.610, p = .035, Cramer's V = 0.277 (Table 3).

Table 2.
Summary of results of Study 2 (N = 226).

Comparison

Time-moving perspective Ego-moving perspective Z p-value

Salty condition 61 (53.51%) 53 (46.49%) −0.656 .512

Spicy condition 45 (40.18%) 67 (59.82%) −1.984 .047

Table 3.
Descriptive statistics of snack qualities and chi-square test of independence analyses for the salty condition and the spicy condition of Study 2.

Quality χ² p-value Cramer's V

Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition

M (SD) M (SD)

Sweetness 1.114 (0.319) 1.304 (0.499) _1.458 1.798 _.227 .407 _0.113 0.127

Saltiness 4.842 (0.837) 1.420 (0.564) _1.307 0.530 _.727 .767 _0.107 0.069

Spiciness 1.175 (0.382) 5.696 (0.826) _0.706 8.610 _.401 .035 _0.079 0.277

Waviness 1.219 (0.416) 1.286 (0.510) _0.029 2.481 _.864 .289 _0.016 0.149

Crispiness 5.070 (0.929) 3.348 (0.835) _3.974 3.421 _.264 .490 _0.187 0.175

Popularity 4.719 (0.917) 4.518 (0.838) _0.654 3.369 _.884 .338 _0.076 0.173

Note. χ², p, Cramer's V values represent the Quality × Temporal Perspective interaction.

Ancillary Analyses

Further analyses were run of the relationship between snack qualities and temporal perspectives. Chi-square test of independence using taste intensity of sweetness, spiciness, saltiness and texture attribute of waviness and crispiness as well as popularity projection as the independent variables and temporal perspectives as the dependent variable revealed that none of the abovementioned factors exerted any effect on perspective preferences in the Salty condition (ps > .05). Similarly in the Spicy condition, no meaningful interaction was found between ratings of the same independent variables (save spiciness) with the temporal perspective preferences (ps > .05) (Table 3).

By showing that spicy taste can slant the taster toward the ego-moving perspective when reasoning about the temporally ambiguous event, Study 2 thus substantiated the cross-domain link between spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective observed in Study 1. This assurance allowed us to proceed with the investigation into the possible contributors behind this novel relationship. Emotion and psychology studies have consistently suggested that spicy taste is related to anger and aggression (e.g., Chen et al., 2023) that both feature approach motivation (e.g., Harmon-Jones & Schutter, 2022). This, coupled with the finding that the ego-moving metaphor is associated with anger by virtue of common approach motivation in space (e.g., Hauser et al., 2009) led to the inference that spicy taste would foster a propensity for the ego-moving perspective with spicy-induced angry emotion and approach motivation acting as possible contributors.

Study 3: Method

Participants

As in Study 2, the real objective of the study was masqueraded as food sampling and the warning that the samples involved spices and nuts and those who were allergic to either should not sign up was given. Informed consent was obtained from each participant. Three hundred and twenty undergraduate and postgraduate students (242 females, M_age: 21.92 years, SD: 1.89 years) from four universities in southwest China were recruited. All of them were Han Chinese from China's mainland and none of them had partaken in the foregoing two studies. Each participant was gifted a bottle of Pepsi as compensation for their time.

Materials and Procedure

Participants were randomly and evenly assigned to the Salty condition (i.e., the control group) and the Spicy condition (i.e., the experimental group). The study was carried out in quiet classrooms with the same cover story told as previously. A different kind of snack stimulus was used to improve the robustness of the spicy effect per se. Specifically, salted peanuts were used in the Salty condition and Sichuan spicy peanuts were used in the Spicy condition. Again, peanuts had been repackaged in clear plastic zip bags to preclude brand recognition. First, participants were asked to have a minimum of three peanuts prepared in paper dishes and relish the tastes for about 90 s. Then they rated the taste intensity of the snack in terms of sweetness, spiciness, and saltiness on a 7-point ascending scale, with higher score denoting greater such taste. Subsequent to the first round of sampling (i.e., that of Brand A), dishes were collected, and in their steads peanuts of the allegedly Brand B were provided. Participants were again encouraged to fully absorb the tastes by chewing the peanuts for about 90 s before responding to the target time question (Li, 2020). To preempt an either-or answer, a parenthesized addendum emphasizing that only a single answer is required was put beside the question. Following this, participants savored some peanuts for another 60 s and turned to two follow-up questions. They were recycled from the experimental methodology employed in a previous study on the relationship between event valence and spatiotemporal metaphors (Margolies & Crawford, 2008). Concretely, the first one asked, “会议改期令你感到多大程度的以下情绪: (How much does the rescheduling make you feel in terms of the following emotions:),” to which participants provided ratings of three emotions on the same ascending scale of “1 = not in the least” to “7 = extremely so.” To disguise the emotion of real interest (i.e., anger), two other basic emotions were introduced to each condition. That is, fear and happiness were included in the Salty condition and in the Spicy condition depression and disgust were added on the strength of the weakest taste-emotion associations (Zhou & Tse, 2020). Immediately following the emotional evaluation, the second one asked, “下列哪一个句子准确地描述了你对改期后的会议的感受？(Which one of the two statements below best describes how you perceive the rescheduled meeting?)” with “1. 我向会议走去。(A. I am approaching the meeting.)” or “2. 会议向我走来。(B. The meeting is approaching me.)” as options. Option A (i.e., the ego-moving representation) and option B (i.e., the time-moving representation) align respectively with approach motivation and avoidance motivation. Next, participants speculated the popularity of Brand B peanuts by giving a score ascending from “1 = not popular at all” to “7 = extremely popular.” Finally, they provided demographic information of gender, age, hometown and ethnic background.

Results

Debriefing showed that no participant cast doubt on the cover story as told and preliminary checks indicated that all participants had faithfully completed all the questions in conformity with the instructions. Therefore, all answers were valid and were put in SPSS 25.0 for statistical analysis.

Manipulation Check

Manipulation check using an independent samples t-test confirmed the success of the stimulus induction. Concretely, there was a reliable difference between the Salty condition and the Spicy condition with regard to the ratings of saltiness, t = 56.447, p < .001, 95% CI = [3.420, 3.667] and spiciness, t = −83.868, p < .001, 95% CI = [−5.073, −4.840], with participants in the Salty condition experiencing remarkably stronger saltiness (M_salty = 5.788, SD = 0.628; M_spicy = 1.013, SD = 0.111) and those in the Spicy condition experiencing noticeably stronger spiciness (M_spicy = 5.975, SD = 0.735; M_salty = 2.244, SD = 0.486).

Taste and Temporal Perspective Preference

Echoing the prior findings, taste exerted a significant effect on temporal perspective preferences. To wit, with the ego-moving perspective choice accounting for less than half (48.13%), participants in the Salty condition did not display any bias in favor of either perspective when cognizing the ambiguous “Next Wednesday's meeting” question, Z = −0.395, p = .693. By contrast, dramatically more people in the Spicy condition (59.38%) preferred the ego-moving perspective by deciphering the meeting to be deferred to next “Friday” than those who adopted the alternative and believed it to be next “Monday,” Z = −2.293, p = .022 (Table 4). Revealed by a chi-square test of independence, the disparity of perspective preferences between conditions was statistically significant, χ2_{1, 320} = 4.073, p = .044, Cramer's V = 0.113.

Table 4.
Summary of results of Study 3 (N = 320).

Time-moving perspective Ego-moving perspective Comparison

Z p-value

Salty condition 83 (51.87%) 77 (48.13%) −0.395 .693

Spicy condition 65 (40.62%) 95 (59.38%) −2.293 .022

Taste and Anger

In congruence with the previous studies where spicy taste was found to be associated with anger (Chen et al., 2023; Ji et al., 2013), we also observed distinguishably different degrees of aroused angry emotion between conditions, χ2_{1, 320} = 312.727, p < .001, Cramer's V = 0.989 (Table 5), evident in the results that people who tasted spicy peanuts reported stronger angry attitude toward the changed meeting (Mspicy = 3.981, SD = 1.141) than their counterparts who tasted salty peanuts (Msalty = 1.013, SD = 0.111).

Table 5.
Descriptive statistics of anger and approach motivation and chi-square test of independence analyses for the salty condition and the spicy condition of Study 3 (N = 320).

Salty condition Spicy condition Comparison

M (SD) M (SD) χ² p-value Cramer's V

Anger 1.013 (0.111) 3.981 (1.141) 312.727 <.001 0.989

Motivation (approach vs. avoidance) 84 (52.5%) vs. 76 (47.5%) 102 (63.75%) vs. 58 (36.25%) 4.160 .041 0.114

Note. χ², p, Cramer's V values represent the Anger/Motivation × Taste Manipulation interaction.

Taste and Directional Motivation

In agreement with our hypothesis, conditions differed discernibly in respect of directional motivation, χ2_{1, 320} = 4.160, p = .041, Cramer's V = 0.114 (Table 5), as manifested by a significantly higher percentage of participants in the Spicy condition (63.75%) exhibiting the partiality toward the perception of their approaching the rescheduled meeting (in consonance with approach motivation) rather than them being approached by it (in consonance with avoidance motivation), Z = −3.399, p = .001. Although in the Salty condition the proportion of participants who identified with the approach-motivated perception (52.50%) also surpassed that of those who opted for the avoidance-motivated perception, the discrepancy was not statistically significant, Z = −0.553, p = .580.

Anger, Approach Motivation and the Ego-Moving Perspective Preference

To find out whether the ego-moving perspective preference in the Spicy condition was related to the spicy-elicited anger and the spicy-elicited approach motivation, we ran two binary logistic regression analyses with anger ratings and approach motivation as the independent variables and temporal perspectives (time-moving perspective = 0 vs. ego-moving perspective = 1) as the dependent variable. As hypothesized, anger, Waldχ² (1, N = 160) = 7.545, p = .006, 95% CI = [1.124, 1.017] and approach motivation, Waldχ² (1, N = 160) = 7.803, p = .005, 95% CI = [1.326, 4.995] were both reliable predictors of the ego-moving perspective propensity, seen in the distinction that those who preferred the ego-moving perspective (M_anger = 4.190, SD = 1.045) expressed greater anger toward the rescheduling than those who adopted the time-moving perspective (M_anger = 3.677, SD = 1.213), χ2_{1, 160} = 11.345, p = .023, Cramer's V = 0.266 and that a significantly higher percentage of participants who adopted the ego-moving perspective (72.63%) than those who favored the alternative (50.77%) envisioned themselves as approaching the rescheduled meeting, χ2_{1, 160} = 7.982, p = .005, Cramer's V = 0.223.

Anger and Approach Motivation

Substantiating the claim that anger is underpinned by approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009), a binary logistic regression using anger ratings as the independent variable and directional motivations (avoidance-motivation = 0 vs. approach-motivation = 1) as the dependent variable revealed that anger reliably predicted approach motivation such that those who perceived themselves as approaching the rescheduled meeting (M_anger = 4.147, SD = 1.181) felt significantly more intense anger than those who perceived the meeting as approaching them (M_anger = 3.690, SD = 1.012), χ2_{1, 160} = 9.84, p = .043, Cramer's V = 0.248.

Mediation Analyses

Given that anger and approach motivation correlated with both spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective, we went one step further by examining whether they mediated the influence of taste on time. To do this, we first performed a simple linear regression analysis that showed spiciness ratings were a positive predictor of the ego-moving perspective preference (B = 0.179, SE = 0.051, β = 0.267, t = 3.483, p = .001). Next, we estimated the direct effect of spicy taste on anger and approach motivation respectively by using the same analysis with anger (B = 0.255, SE = 0.122, β = 0.164, t = 2.096, p = .038) and approach motivation (B = 0.251, SE = 0.048, β = 0.382, t = 5.202, p < .001) as the dependent variables and spiciness ratings as the independent variable. Then, we calculated the direct effect of spicy taste and anger/approach motivation on the ego-moving perspective preference via the same regression analysis with the ego-moving perspective as the dependent variable and spicy and anger (Bspicy = 0.159, SE = 0.051, β = 0.237, t = 3.094, p = .002; Banger = 0.079, SE = 0.033, β = 0.182, t = 2.381, p = .018) or spicy and approach motivation (Bspicy = 0.143, SE = 0.055, β = 0.213, t = 2.580, p = .011; Bapproach = 0.145, SE = 0.084, β = 0.142, t = 1.722, p = .087) as the independent variables. Finally, to assess the statistical significance of the indirect effect of anger and approach in the relationship between spice taste on the ego-moving perspective, Sobel's test (1982) was used with relevant unstandardized coefficients entered in the online calculation program for Sobel's test (http://quantpsy.org/sobel/sobel.htm). The results showed that neither factor significantly mediated the relationship (ps > .05). Therefore, although anger and approach motivation may be related to the taste-time relationship, the relationship did not have to occur through one or the other.

Ancillary Analyses

Finally, we analyzed the relationships between filler variables and temporal perspectives. In spite of there being a noticeable difference between conditions in terms of sweetness intensity, χ2_{1, 320} = 50.060, p < .001, Cramer's V = 0.396 and popularity appraisal, χ2_{1, 320} = 23.212, p < .001, Cramer's V = 0.269, sweetness ratings did not interact meaningfully with the temporal perspective preferences in the Salty condition or in the Spicy condition (ps > .05). The same statistical insignificance held true for the popularity estimate, which did not significantly affect the temporal perspective preferences in either condition (ps > .05). Likewise, just as feelings of fear and happiness did not interact meaningfully with the perspective preferences in the Salty condition (ps > .05), ratings of depression and disgust did not affect the temporal perspective preferences in the Spicy condition (ps > .05) (Table 6).

Table 6.
Descriptive statistics of snack qualities and emotional evaluations and chi-square test of independence analyses for the salty condition and the spicy condition of Study 3.

Quality Emotion χ² p-value Cramer's V

Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition Salty condition Spicy condition

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)

Sweetness 1.119 (0.325) 1.481 (0.501) 0.715 1.117 .675 .290 0.033 0.084

Popularity 3.331 (1.120) 3.031 (0.974) 5.458 5.943 .363 .203 0.185 0.193

Fear 1.106 (0.309) 0.009 .926 0.007

Happiness 1.688 (0.665) 4.237 .120 0.163

Depression 1.113 (0.317) 0.123 .726 0.028

Disgust 1.075 (0.264) 1.313 .252 0.091

Note. χ², p, Cramer's V values represent the Quality/Emotion × Temporal Perspective interaction.

Taken together, Study 3 attested to and extended the preceding findings by demonstrating that when addressing the temporal ambiguity spicy intake can induce a predilection toward the ego-moving perspective that was related to heightened anger and intensified approach motivation.

Discussion

Overview

Embodied cognition maintains that higher-order cognitive processing can be the effect of sensory, motor, and affective experiences (Barsalou, 2008). Despite an assemblage of empirical evidence converging on the spatial (Bender & Beller, 2014; Boroditsky, 2000; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002) and emotional (Margolies & Crawford, 2008; Richmond et al., 2012; Zheng et al., 2019) influence on the metaphorical representation of time, little is known about the sensory role in this regard. Drawing upon two well-established streams of research—one regarding the spatial and emotional influence on temporal representation (e.g., Hauser et al., 2009) and one concerning the gustatory influence on emotional status (e.g., Ji et al., 2013), the current research explored the potential relationship between taste and time by delving into the specific influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspective on time. Concretely, Study 1 and Study 2 probed whether spicy taste enjoyment and consumption would be more likely to evoke the ego-moving perspective when disambiguating the “Next Wednesday's meeting” question (Li, 2020) and it was revealed that people who enjoyed spicy taste more (vs. those who enjoyed it less) and participants who ingested spicy chips (vs. those who ingested salty chips) displayed a preference for the ego-moving perspective. Because spicy taste is associated with anger and approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009; Chen et al., 2023; Harmon-Jones & Schutter, 2022) that predicted the ego-moving perspective (Hauser et al., 2009), we hypothesized that the taste-time link discovered might be related to spicy-aroused anger and approach motivation. Study 3 provided confirmatory evidence that spicy (vs. salty) intake led to the inclination toward the ego-moving perspective with heightened angry feeling toward and intensified approach-motivated perception of the rescheduled meeting. Consistently across three studies, we demonstrated that spicy taste can modulate people's metaphorical perspectives on time when reasoning about a temporally ambiguous statement. The present findings as such affirm the embodied cognition by highlighting that gustatory experience can shape temporal conceptualization with emotion and directional motivation playing possible contributory roles.

Justifications

Spicy-Ego-Moving Perspective Relationship From the Perspective of Weak Embodiment

According to the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphor is a representational transformation of domains in which one abstract domain can be described, represented, and comprehended by a concrete domain without the two having any similarity (Banaruee et al., 2019; Khatin-Zadeh et al., 2017). Cross-domain metaphorical mappings can help people process and construe otherwise abstract concepts (Brugman et al., 2019; Thibodeau et al., 2017). Across cultures, the domain of space is metaphorically mapped onto that of time (e.g., Bender & Beller, 2014; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Like spatiotemporal metaphors in English (e.g., long time no see), for example, Chinese also stocks such space-based time expressions as “长年 (long year: all year around)” and “前天 (front day: the day before yesterday).” However, other than being placed predominantly on the horizontal (long vs. short) and the sagittal plane (front vs. back), temporal concepts in Chinese uniquely utilize the vertical axis. To better illustrate, small hours of the morning is “深夜 (deep night)” and prenoon and afternoon are respectively “上午 (up noon)” and “下午 (down noon).” Because spatiotemporal metaphors common to a language determine how time is spatially constructed in the mind of that particular language users (Boroditsky, 2018), this linguistic idiosyncrasy thus prompted Mandarin speakers to spatialize time from top to bottom more frequently than their English counterparts in whose language horizontal spatiotemporal metaphors prevail (Bergen & Lau, 2012; Boroditsky et al., 2011). Such is the solid chronic influence of native language on temporal conceptualization that acquisition of a second language cannot override the ingrained pattern (Yang et al., 2022). Immediate effect of language on temporal construal is also pronounced. Mandarin-English bilinguals preferred the vertical arrangement of sequential time when tested in Mandarin than when tested in English (Fuhrman et al., 2011). Importantly, spatiotemporal metaphors can generate metaphor-congruous temporal representations. In Chinese, for example, although both front-back metaphors for time, as in “后天 (back day: the day after tomorrow)” and up-down metaphors for time, as in “晚上 (evening up: evening)” coexist, study showed that Mandarin speakers tended to represent time in manners consistent with the specific metaphor prompts, such that being prompted with front-back/up-down time metaphors produced more frequent front-back/up-down time representations (Lai & Boroditsky, 2013). Taken together, these insights suggest that repeated and immediate exposure to spatiotemporal metaphors in language can mold people's mental representation of the abstract concept of time (Boroditsky, 2001; Lai & Boroditsky, 2013; but also see Chen, 2007; January & Kako, 2007; Tse & Altarriba, 2008 for contradictory evidence).

In support of this weak embodiment account that language shapes thought (Boroditsky, 2001), the spicy-ego-moving perspective link uncovered herein is mirrored, albeit implicitly in conventionalized linguistic expressions. To wit, spicy is gustatorily synonymous with oral heat (Guzmán & Bosland, 2017) and burn (Nolden et al., 2019). Idioms and proverbs that borrow these three symbolic proxies to connote temporal concepts, especially temporal urgency abound, with “趁热打铁 (take advantage of the heat to strike iron: to strike while the iron is hot),” “热锅上的蚂蚁 (an ant on a hot pan: like a cat on hot bricks),” “风风火火 (wind wind fire fire: hurried and hasty)” and “火急火燎 (fire urgent fire burn: restless with anxiety)” being prime examples. But how does the metaphorical relevance in language through recurrence inform association in conceptual representation? According to the career-of-metaphor account, novel metaphors are understood by the alignment between the source concept and the target concept in terms of their relational commonalities (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005). For example, the understanding of the novel metaphor “negotiation is a muscle” is predicated on their shared attribute, that is, both can be perfected through practice (Jamrozik et al., 2016). Recall that the ego-moving representation puts a longer distance between the ego and the future event (i.e., choosing the deferral of the meeting to next “Friday” over the advancement of the meeting to next “Monday” when decoding the ambiguous meeting question) and as a result latest research found that adoption of the ego-moving perspective engendered a higher level of consumer impatience in a waiting situation (Xu et al., 2023). This insight, in combination with the linguistic illustrations that use spicy substitutes to indicate temporal urgency suggests that the spicy-ego-moving metaphor link may be founded on a relational affinity of keenness for action, whereby spicy-evoked temporal urgency and the resultant eagerness to move would activate the same psychological state and spatial motivation implicated in the ego-moving representation. Arguably, this theorizing is supported by the findings of Study 3, which evinced that spicy (vs. salty) intake generated stronger approach-motivated tendency and provided substantiating evidence that the ego-moving perspective was predicted by the approach motivation (Hauser et al., 2009). Admittedly, future research may investigate the priming effect of spicy-containing and spicy-related words and phrases on the subsequent perspective on the movement of events in time, or replicate the current research among people whose native language does not have the prima facie associations to test the rigor of this reasoning.

Spicy-Anger Relationship From the Perspective of Embodied Cognition

In coherence with prior findings that enjoyment and consumption of spicy food are positively related to anger (Batra et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2023), our results indicated that spicy (vs. salty) ingestion aroused greater angry feeling toward a temporal rearrangement (Study 3). As maintained by embodied cognition, bodily experiences scaffold cognitive processes (Barsalou, 2008). Gustatory experience of chili peppers that contain the pungent ingredient called capsaicin (Xiang et al., 2022) can cause tissue irritation, oral burn and pain, an increase in body temperature and reddening in the face (Adetunji et al., 2022; Ji et al., 2013; Zhou et al., 2023). These physiological manifestations are also symptomatically characteristic of being in an angry emotional state (Menete & Jiang, 2021; Wilkowski et al., 2009). It seems therefore that spicy taste and anger are similarly embodied in terms of bodily sensations such that the evocation of one sensory experience (i.e., spiciness) can activate the other emotional state (i.e., anger) through common physical responses.

Anger-Ego-Moving Perspective Relationship From the Perspective of Embodied Cognition

In concordance with the previous revelation that anger and the ego-moving metaphor are linked through a shared embodied link (Hauser et al., 2009), we provided convergent evidence that those who preferred the ego-moving perspective reported significantly stronger anger toward and greater approach-motivated perception of the rescheduled meeting (Study 3). As mentioned before, emotion implicates motivation, with positive emotions priming approach motivation and negative emotions priming avoidance motivation (Elliot et al., 2013). That being said, behavioral and neural evidence has linked anger to approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009; Gable et al., 2015; Threadgill & Gable, 2020). Because approach motivation is defined as the impetus to approach (Gable & Dreisbach, 2021) and activates forward motion that shortens the distance between the self and a desired destination (Carver, 2006), it relates to the ego-moving metaphor that is metaphorically represented as the observer actively moving toward the future (Duffy & Feist, 2017). As a consequence of both anger and the ego-moving perspective simulating approach-motivated behavioral tendency in space, the directed motivation triggered by one domain (i.e., anger) can map onto the other (i.e., the ego-moving perspective) that is similarly embodied (Hauser et al., 2009).

Contributions

By establishing a novel link between spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor, our research contributes to the existing literature in mainly four aspects. First and in general, our research enriches the growing body of literature on the multisensory influence (e.g., Acevedo et al., 2023; Saunders et al., 2018; Spence, 2021) on all aspects of life (Costa-López et al., 2021). Second, despite not being counted as one of the five basic tastes, spicy taste enjoys rising global desirability and is in dire need of further research in the academia (Spence, 2018). Our research is a positive response to this appeal. Specifically, given that the majority of extant research on spicy taste is focused on its interaction with behavior and personality (Batra et al., 2017; Byrnes & Hayes, 2013; Ji et al., 2013; Mukherjee et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2016) rather than with cognition, our research extends the literature with first evidence for the cognitive effect of spicy intake, initiating inquiries into the influence of spicy taste on other aspects of cognition. Third, in spite of ample evidence attesting to the spatial and emotional influence on the metaphorical representation of time (Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002; Matlock et al., 2011; Richmond et al., 2012), much remains to be known about the role of sensory experience in temporal representation. Our research, by unveiling the potential influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspective on time, reinforces the embodied cognition by stressing sensory engagement in conceptual processing (e.g., Ostarek & Bottini, 2021). In particular and in alignment with previous findings (Hauser et al., 2009; Zheng et al., 2019), we noted that anger and approach motivation induced by spicy intake both predicted the ego-moving perspective preference (Study 3). As such, our research opens up promising avenues for integrated investigation into the influence of other tastes or other sensory modalities on temporal perspective preferences that bears on mutual arousal of emotion and its attendant motivation. For example, studies have shown that sweet taste can have a favorable effect on hypothetical romantic relationships (Ren et al., 2015) and promote prosocial behaviors (Meier et al., 2012), both of which exemplify approach behavior (Schaefer et al., 2023). It would be interesting to find out whether experiencing sweet taste would tilt the taster toward the ego-moving perspective because of its being positive and a catalyzer for approach-related social cognition and behavior. Regarding other senses, other than being the color of spicy (e.g., Shermer & Levitan, 2014), red is also the color of anger (Fugate & Franco, 2019) or aggression (Barsalou, 2008), reflected in idioms such as “脸红脖子粗 (face is red and neck is thick: furious)” in Chinese and “like a red rag to a bull” in English. Research found that the perception of red color can boost a short but potent motor activation (Elliot & Aarts, 2011) that is not dissimilar to the approach motivation inherent in the ego-moving representation. Investigating whether visual exposure to red color can affect people's metaphorical perspective on time as a result of similarly directed motivation in space would be another worthwhile endeavor. Finally, both the discovered link between spicy taste and the ego-moving metaphor and the validated correlation between anger and approach motivation are in a more or less explicit way mirrored in metaphorical expressions in language. In this sense, the present findings add weight to the weak embodiment that language structures abstract concepts and shapes abstract thought (e.g., Boroditsky, 2001; Boroditsky, 2011; Dove, 2023).

Limitations

Although the current research has registered consistent evidence indicating a positive correlation between spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective, there are limitations that must be factored in when referencing its results. The first limitation pertains to the unidirectionality of the influence, particularly that of the concrete experience of gustation on the abstract conceptualization of time. Although spicy taste and anger may influence each other (Ji et al., 2013), recent evidence suggests that the metaphorical association between taste and emotion is unidirectional in that whereas taste perceptions of sweetness and bitterness influenced emotional valence, the reverse was not true (Zhou & Tse, 2022). With this in mind, a follow-up study that examines the reverse effect of temporal perspective on taste perception is needed for a finer understanding of the directionality of metaphorical associations, that is, whether they are unidirectional (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) or bidirectional (e.g., Wang et al., 2023). Second, the subject population of our research was solely composed of university students. However, some work has shown that professionals and students may approach the temporal ambiguity contrarily as a consequence of differentiated time demands. To wit, compared with university administrators whose time management is more rigid and regimented, university students with greater temporal wiggle room were prone to the ego-moving perspective (Duffy & Feist, 2014). It is perhaps necessary in the future to replicate our study among a wider Chinese population and find out how generalizable the current results are. Third, anger is approach-related (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009) and people who are higher in trait anger tend to decode the temporal ambiguity from the ego-moving perspective (Hauser et al., 2009). The absent measurement of trait anger in Study 3 therefore raises the possibility that the preponderance of “Friday” answers and approach motivation choices reported in the Spicy condition of the said study might have been due to the majority of participants originally having an angry predisposition, independent of the spicy stimulus. To rid this potentially confounding factor, future replication attempts should compare trait anger and state anger to ensure the effect of the experimental stimulus. Fourth, although the Chinese adaptation of the “Next Wednesday's meeting” question has proven ambiguity in eliciting temporal perspective preferences among Chinese native speakers (Li, 2020; Li & Cao, 2020; Zheng et al., 2019), the fact that the nature of the meeting is unspecified and personal appraisal of the magnitude of the rescheduling unassessed may potentially impairs its reliability. For example, when people expected to attend a real meeting next Wednesday instead of imagining the same scenario, as is the case here and in other published studies (e.g., Li & Cao, 2020), they leaned toward the ego-moving perspective by putting the meeting off until Friday. Possible explanation for the disconnect between real-life temporal deliberation and hypothetical temporal resolution is that whereas individual differences (e.g., personality) may be more influential when mentally computing possibilities for a hypothetical meeting rescheduling task, such influence may be overridden by real-life practice of deferral when rescheduling a meeting has real-life consequences (Li, 2020). Future research should consider appending the assessment of subjective attitude toward the meeting rearrangement to the temporal disambiguation paradigm in order to test the robustness of the unbiased distribution of temporal perspectives. Fifth, given that repeated metaphorical use can result in abstract representation (Jamrozik et al., 2016) and that there are metaphorical expressions in Mandarin Chinese that implicitly link spicy taste to temporal concepts, people whose language does not have parallel linguistic metaphors or has different metaphorical correspondences may not be so receptive to the implicit association documented in this research. Finally, despite being independently related to spicy taste and the ego-moving perspective, anger and approach motivation did not mediate the connection between the two. Additional research is called for to shed light on the factors or mechanisms that underlie the taste-time relationship.

	Time-moving perspective	Ego-moving perspective	Comparison
Salty liking	5.255 (0.896)	5.059 (0.858)	3.787	.436	0.197
Spicy liking	4.936 (1.524)	6.020 (1.273)	13.529	.035	0.3720

			Comparison
Salty condition	61 (53.51%)	53 (46.49%)	−0.656	.512
Spicy condition	45 (40.18%)	67 (59.82%)	−1.984	.047

	Quality	χ²	p-value	Cramer's V
Sweetness	1.114 (0.319)	1.304 (0.499)	_1.458	1.798	_.227	.407	_0.113	0.127
Saltiness	4.842 (0.837)	1.420 (0.564)	_1.307	0.530	_.727	.767	_0.107	0.069
Spiciness	1.175 (0.382)	5.696 (0.826)	_0.706	8.610	_.401	.035	_0.079	0.277
Waviness	1.219 (0.416)	1.286 (0.510)	_0.029	2.481	_.864	.289	_0.016	0.149
Crispiness	5.070 (0.929)	3.348 (0.835)	_3.974	3.421	_.264	.490	_0.187	0.175
Popularity	4.719 (0.917)	4.518 (0.838)	_0.654	3.369	_.884	.338	_0.076	0.173

	Time-moving perspective	Ego-moving perspective	Comparison
Salty condition	83 (51.87%)	77 (48.13%)	−0.395	.693
Spicy condition	65 (40.62%)	95 (59.38%)	−2.293	.022

	Salty condition	Spicy condition	Comparison
Anger	1.013 (0.111)	3.981 (1.141)	312.727	<.001	0.989
Motivation (approach vs. avoidance)	84 (52.5%) vs. 76 (47.5%)	102 (63.75%) vs. 58 (36.25%)	4.160	.041	0.114

	Quality	Emotion	χ²	p-value	Cramer's V
Sweetness	1.119 (0.325)	1.481 (0.501)			0.715	1.117	.675	.290	0.033	0.084
Popularity	3.331 (1.120)	3.031 (0.974)			5.458	5.943	.363	.203	0.185	0.193
Fear			1.106 (0.309)		0.009		.926		0.007
Happiness			1.688 (0.665)		4.237		.120		0.163
Depression				1.113 (0.317)		0.123		.726		0.028
Disgust				1.075 (0.264)		1.313		.252		0.091

Footnotes

Author's note

Yutian Qin is also affiliated with the College of International Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China.

Author contribution(s)

Yutian Qin: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Software; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Yutian Qin

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	Time-moving perspective	Ego-moving perspective	Comparison
	M (SD)	M (SD)	χ²	p-value	Cramer's V
Salty liking	5.255 (0.896)	5.059 (0.858)	3.787	.436	0.197
Spicy liking	4.936 (1.524)	6.020 (1.273)	13.529	.035	0.3720