Here's another article from the content farm website, StudyFinds. This one's on the personality correlates of liking spicy foods, and it includes a combination of frequency and association claims. The same poll was also covered by the NYPost and by Yahoo! News (with a video)
Below I will post a series of quotes and questions from the StudyFinds version of the story.
Ninety-three percent of respondents prefer some level of heat in their food. However, nearly four in 10 (36%) say they go for medium heat, 33 percent go for mild, and just 24 percent like their spice level set to hot.
a) Based on this statement, there seem to be four levels of the "Liking Spicy Foods" variable. What are they?
The methodology of the survey is not always clear from the press stories. Here is one example:
Spicy food eaters are more likely to enjoy trying new things (76%), consider themselves attractive (62%), and are more content with their lives (66%) than those with milder heat preferences.
b) In the quote above, what is your guess about who counts as a "spicy food eater"? That is, which answer would a person have to give to the "Liking Spicy Foods" variable you listed in a) in order to be counted as a "spicy food eater"?
In the quote above, another problem is they only report the percentages for the "spicy food eaters". We'd also need to know the corresponding percentages for "those with milder heat preferences."
c) What would these corresponding percentages be able to tell us about effect size? Propose some alternative outcomes for the variable "trying new things" that would show a large effect size vs. a small one.
Here is a quote from later in the story:
Almost one-third (32%) of spicy food fanatics follow a certain diet like vegan or vegetarian— more than double than no spice fans (13%) and more than any other spice preference.
It's great that this quote at least tells us the percentage in each group that are vegan/vegetarian. However, it still does not tell us how they operationalized being a "spicy food fanatic" vs a "no spice fan."
d) Here's another quote from the journalist's story. Based on what you answered so far (in previous questions), what is good and bad about the coverage in this quote?
Of those who prefer hot foods, 21 percent consider themselves extroverted, compared to 15 percent of mild food eaters. Those who pack on the heat are also more likely to describe themselves as creative (54%), confident (51%), and adventurous (44%).
Another consideration here is the cultural background of the participants. One of my colleagues grew up in India, where children often learn to eat spicy foods from an early age.
e) How might culture moderate the relationships reported here, for example, how might it moderate the relationship between liking spicy food and being extroverted?
f) This study was conducted by a commercial polling firm, and this particular study was commissioned by the brand Frank's RedHot. Do you think this commercial funding should affect our interpretation of the data? Why or why not?
Selected Answers:
a) The variable "Liking Spicy Foods" has four levels: No heat, mild heat preference, medium heat preference, and hot heat preference.
b) It's not clear--but it's possible that they counted anybody who picked mild, medium, or hot (that is, 93% of the sample) as a "spicy food eater"?
c) Here's an example. What if 76% of spicy food eaters like trying new things but 70% of non-spicy food eaters like trying new things? That's not a very big effect size! But if 76% of spicy food eaters like trying new things but 20% of non-spicy food eaters like trying new things, that would be a very large effect size.
d) This quote has the same problem of not defining what a spicy food eater is. But at least they give the percentages of extroverts for two different groups.
e) If a culture serves a lot of spicy foods and even children learn to enjoy them, then it's possible that "liking spicy food" will not be strongly correlated with personality (there's a ceiling effect on the spicy food variable). The personality correlations may exist only for cultures where spicy foods are more variable.
