What your coffee says about you, and why psychologists want to know

Yesterday, I added cinnamon powder to my coffee and threw in a cinnamon stick for a stirrer. A little extra to sugar and milk which I always add to my brewed drink. And I wondered how many people would bother with the additional step. Hmmm…

Folks who add sugar and milk to their coffee are people pleasers?

Apparently, how you take your coffee says a lot about your personality. And that’s not based on some clickbaity meme. There’s actually a psych survey with 1,000 respondents that explores the relation between coffee drinkers and their choice of coffee. The results say that people who add sugar and milk to their coffee are people pleasers, generous with their time and will go out of their way to help others.

Well, I add sugar and milk to my coffee but the personality described above does not fit me at all. I don’t go out of my way to please people. I value my time so I detest wasting it on undeserving people and situations. And because I’m a firm believer and proponent of self-reliance, I only offer a helping hand to those who have been dealt a really devastating blow by a confluence of circumstances.

Of course, that’s just one study. I continued Googling to find out if there are others and, if there are, whether the results affirm or deny those from the first one I read. I found reference to another study that yielded similar results.

Cappuccino drinkers are “bored by details”?

While simple brewed coffee with sugar and milk is my staple at home, when ordering coffee, I always get a cappuccino.

Like their drink, cappuccino drinkers are all froth and bubble, bored by detail and liking – but not obsessed with – material objects.

Coffee: your personality in a cup

Well, this cappuccino worshipper is also a details freak with no real fondness for material objects. I’d rather splurge on travel than buy stuff. And, during travel, I prefer to spend time and money on experiences (cooking class and pottery class, for instance) rather than shopping.

I was starting to feel like an aberration — living proof that at least two studies about coffee drinkers arrived at wrong conclusions. I went on reading, and found a third study.

Black coffee drinkers have psychopathic and sadistic traits?

That’s the conclusion drawn by a news report about a study on the relation between personality and the preference for bitter taste.

Specifically, psychopathy, everyday sadism, and trait aggression were significantly positively correlated, and agreeableness was significantly negatively correlated with general bitter taste preferences.

Individual differences in bitter taste preferences are associated with antisocial personality traits

That third study shouldn’t concern me because I never take my coffee black. BUT. I love chocolate. Dark chocolate. Bitter chocolate. Should I worry that I might be a closet serial killer? Considering that two studies are already wrong about me in relation to my coffee preference, I felt there’s a good chance that the third is mistaken as well.

But what really amazed me was the existence of such studies. Why would anyone be interested in profiling coffee drinkers at all? Is it in pursuit of scientific truth? Or is it something else? I got my answer when I discovered a fourth study.

Profiling coffee drinkers for marketing and ad targeting

While there may be studies about coffee drinkers that are genuine scientific inquiries, I came upon a fourth study that was commissioned by a big coffee company. It divided respondents into black coffee drinkers and those who added milk or sugar, or both, to their drink. It went on to find out what people in each group preferred — dogs or cats, summer or winter, Game of Thrones or The Big Bang Theory. It even has an astrological angle.

And I finally understood why so much time and money are spent studying coffee drinkers, their specific personalities and their preferences. Of course. The approach may be scientific, the interest may be sociological, but the goal is economic. It’s for marketing purposes. It’s ad targeting. By dividing coffee drinkers into categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories, coffee sellers and sellers of anything coffee related get a better idea on how to peddle their products.