• Bitter taste preferences are positively associated with antisocial personality traits
• Bitter taste preferences may predict sadism tendencies
• Results suggest close relationship between the sense of taste and personality

What you order at the bar might say more about you than you think.

Researchers at Innsbruck University found that people who enjoy bitter flavours like the tonic water in gin and tonic, black coffee, and dark chocolate are more prone to "Machiavellianism, psychoticism, and narcissism," among other traits.

More than 900 men and women were surveyed in the Austrian study. In addition to grading sour, salty and bitter foods on a scale, participants were asked to answer questionnaires testing their emotional stability.

"Supertasting, that is, having a high sensitivity to bitter compounds, has been consistently linked to increased emotionality in humans and rats," they study stated. "Most notably, sweet taste experiences increased self-reported agreeableness and the intention to help and decreased death anxiety, whereas bitter taste experiences were shown to elicit harsher moral judgments and interpersonal hostility. "

Scientists found the those who favoured bitter food and drinks more often than not displayed a higher number of negative personality traits.