Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn
THE mental state of men ready and poised to kill has long fascinated scientists. The Nobel Prize winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, says such persons experience the ‘Holy Shiver’ (called Heiliger Schauer in German) just moments before performing the deed. In his famous book On Aggression, Lorenz describes it as a tingling of the spine prior to performing a heroic act in defence of their communities.
This feeling, he says, is akin to the pre-human reflex that raises hair on an animal’s back as it zeroes in for the kill. He writes: “A shiver runs down the back and along the outside of both arms. All obstacles become unimportant … instinctive inhibitions against hurting or killing disappear … Men enjoy the feeling of absolute righteousness even as they commit atrocities.”
While they stripped naked and beat their colleague Mashal Khan with sticks and bricks, the 20-25 students of the Mardan university enjoyed precisely this feeling of righteousness. They said Khan had posted content disrespectful of Islam on his Facebook page and so they took it upon themselves to punish him. Finally, one student took out his pistol and shot him dead. Hundreds of others watched approvingly and, with their smartphone cameras, video-recorded the killing for distribution on their Facebook pages. A meeting of this self-congratulatory group resolved to hide the identity of the shooter.
Khan had blasphemed! Until this was finally shown to be false, no proper funeral was possible in his home village. Sympathy messages from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and opposition leaders such as Bilawal Bhutto came only after it had been established that Khan performed namaz fairly regularly.
Significantly, no protests of significance followed. University campuses were silent and meetings discussing the murder were disallowed. A demonstration at the Islamabad Press Club drew about 450, a miniscule figure against the estimated 200,000 who attended Mumtaz Qadri’s last rites.
This suggests that much of the Pakistani public, whether tacitly or openly, endorses violent punishment of suspected blasphemers. Why? How did so many Pakistanis become bloodthirsty vigilantes? Evening TV talk shows — at least those I have either seen or participated in — circle around two basic explanations.
One, favoured by the liberal-minded, blames the blasphemy law and implicitly demands its repeal (an explicit call would endanger one’s life). The other, voiced by the religiously orthodox, says vigilantism occurs only because our courts act too slowly against accused blasphemers.
Both claims are not just wrong, they are farcical. Subsequent to Khan’s killing, at least two other incidents show that gut reactions — not what some law says — is really what counts. In one, three armed burqa-clad sisters shot dead a man near Sialkot who had been accused of committing blasphemy 13 years ago. In the other, a visibly mentally ill man in Chitral uttered remarks inside a mosque and escaped lynching only upon the imam’s intervention. The mob subsequently burned the imam’s car. Heiliger Schauer!
While searching for a real explanation, let’s first note that religiously charged mobs are also in motion across the border. As more people flock to mandirs or masjids, the outcomes are strikingly similar. In an India that is now rapidly Hinduising, crowds are cheering enraged gau rakshaks who smash the skulls of Muslims suspected of consuming or transporting cows. In fact India has its own Khan — Pehlu Khan.
Accused of cattle-smuggling, Pehlu Khan was lynched and killed by cow vigilantes earlier this month before a cheering crowd in Alwar, with the episode also video-recorded. Minister Gulab Chand Kataria declared that Khan belonged to a family of cow smugglers and he had no reason to feel sorry. Now that cow slaughter has been hyped as the most heinous of crimes, no law passed in India can reverse vigilantism.
Vigilantism is best explained by evolutionary biology and sociology. A fundamental principle there says only actions and thoughts that help strengthen group identity are well received, others are not. In common with our ape ancestors, we humans instinctively band together in groups because strength lies in unity. The benefits of group membership are immense — access to social networks, enhanced trust, recognition, etc. Of course, as in a club, membership carries a price tag. Punishing cow-eaters or blasphemers (even alleged ones will do) can be part payment. You become a real hero by slaying a villain — ie someone who challenges your group’s ethos. Your membership dues are also payable by defending or eulogising heroes.
Celebration of such ‘heroes’ precedes Qadri. The 19-year old illiterate who killed Raj Pal, the Hindu publisher of a controversial book on the Prophet (PBUH), was subsequently executed by the British but the youth was held in the highest esteem. Ghazi Ilm Din is venerated by a mausoleum over his grave in Lahore. An 8th grade KP textbook chapter eulogising him tells us that Ilm Din’s body remained fresh days after the execution.
In recent times, backed by the formidable power of the state, Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan have vigorously injected religion into both politics and society. The result is their rapid re-tribalisation through ‘meme transmission’ of primal values. A concept invented by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the meme is a ‘piece of thought’ transferrable from person to person by imitation. Like computer viruses, memes can jump from mind to mind.
Memes containing notions of religious or cultural superiority have been ‘cut-and-pasted’ into millions of young minds. Consequently, more than ever before, today’s youth uncritically accepts the inherent morality of their particular group, engages in self-censorship, rationalises the group’s decisions, and engages in moral policing.
Groupthink and deadly memes caused the lynching and murder of the two Khans. Is a defence against such viral afflictions ever possible? Can the subcontinent move away from its barbaric present to a civilised future? One can so hope. After all, like fleas, memes and thought packages can jump from person to person. But they don’t bite everybody! A robust defence can be built by educating people into the spirit of critical inquiry, helping them become individuals rather than groupies, and encouraging them to introspect. A sense of humour, and maybe poetry, would also help.
Saturday 29 April 2017
Friday 28 April 2017
Of course Theresa May offers stability – just look at her unchanging positions on Brexit and general elections
Mark Steel in The Independent
The Conservative slogan for the election is “Strong and stable”. Because that’s the main thing we want from a government, strength and stability, like you get with Vladimir Putin.
Only idiots get obsessed with the details of what their leaders are strong and stable about, because the important thing is they’re strong while they’re doing it, and they keep doing it even if it’s insane.
Jeremy Corbyn should prove he can match their stability by burning down a public building at precisely half past nine every morning, and display his strength by punching people in the face as they run out the door screaming.
But this would barely touch the Government’s record of strength and stability. For example, every year since they took over in 2010, there has been a rise in the numbers dependent on food banks, going up every year, nice and stable, not haphazardly up one year and down the next so you don’t know where you stand. And weak governments might see hungry kids and feel a pang of conscience, but not this lot because they’re like sodding Iron Man.
George Osborne was so stable he missed every target he set, not just a few or 80 per cent, but every single one because business needs predictability, and when Osborne announced a target, our wealth creators could guarantee he’d come nowhere near it.
I expect they’ll also refer every day to their universal credit scheme, which is five years behind schedule and cost £16bn. You have to be strong to lose that amount and not care. Weak people would get to £3-4bn and think “Oh dear, maybe we should stop”, but not if you’re strong and stable.
The current Chancellor is nearly as impressive. After the Tories promised that under no circumstances would they raise National Insurance, Philip Hammond then raised National Insurance and cancelled raising it a few days later as it was so unpopular, exuding the sort of strength and stability that puts you in mind of Churchill.
Boris Johnson has exhibited the same values, displaying why we can trust him to stand up to dictators such as Syria’s President Assad. After one of Assad’s military victories, Boris wrote: “I cannot conceal my elation as the news comes in from Palmyra and it is reported that the Syrian army is genuinely back in control of the entire Unesco site… any sane person should feel a sense of satisfaction at what Assad’s troops have accomplished”, in an article headlined: “Bravo for Assad – he is a vile tyrant but he has saved Palmyra from [Isis]”.
Since then, the Foreign Secretary has steadfastly stuck with maximum stability to this view, with only the mildest amendment such as: “We must bomb Assad immediately; no sane person could ever wish him to control anything unless they’re a communist terrorist mugwump.”
What a model of stability, because most military experts agree it doesn’t really matter which side you’re on in a war, as long as you don’t compromise your strength or stability by not being in the war at all.
Then there was the Prime Minister’s line on not having an election, from which she hasn’t wavered one bit, and her insistence that we had to remain in the EU, which she’s adjusted a tiny bit to insisting we can only thrive outside the EU, but always either inside or outside, and never once has she suggested we must be somewhere else such as a split in the cosmos consisting of dark antimatter in which we can be both in and out of the EU due to time and space being governed by the European Court of Human Rights.
Thankfully the Labour Party is standing up to Conservative arguments with a dynamic campaign in which they explain how miserable everyone is.
The next party political broadcast will consist of Labour leaders walking through a shopping centre in Wolverhampton, pointing at people and saying: “Look at that bloke – utterly crestfallen. That’s a Tory government for you.”
It feels as if most people have already switched off in this election, so Labour’s best hope could be to answer questions by talking about an entirely different issue. So when Diane Abbott is asked whether Labour’s plans for education have been properly costed, she says, “I’m not sure. But I’ve been reading about koala bears. Did you know they’re not bears at all but marsupials, closer to the kangaroo?”
It doesn’t help that, as in any election, the Conservatives have much greater resources. If we lived in a proper democracy, these would be evened up.
Each newspaper would have to support a different party for each election, so The Daily Telegraph might support the Greens. And the letters column would read: “Dear Sir; with regard to current controversies concerning the use of television replays in Test match cricket, which jeopardise the ultimate authority of the umpire and therefore threaten the rule of law itself, it occurs to me the most sensible way to resolve these matters might be to renationalise the railways and install 40,000 wind turbines round Sussex. Yours sincerely, Sir Bartholomew Clutterbuck.”
And if a wealthy businessman has money to donate to a party, the one it went to would be decided by lottery. So if Lord Bamford wants to contribute to society, he hands over £1m, then is thrilled to learn it’s gone to the Maoist Rastafarian Ban Fishing on Sundays Alliance.
The Conservatives would be delighted to give money to Maoists, because Mao was always strong and stable. You didn’t get him calling off a Great Leap Forward because he was offended by being called a mugwump. General Franco, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini – these are the strong and stable models to aspire to, not these weedy liberal Gandhi types, though Nelson Mandela might qualify as a figure of stability, as he kept to pretty much the same routine for 27 years.
The Conservative slogan for the election is “Strong and stable”. Because that’s the main thing we want from a government, strength and stability, like you get with Vladimir Putin.
Only idiots get obsessed with the details of what their leaders are strong and stable about, because the important thing is they’re strong while they’re doing it, and they keep doing it even if it’s insane.
Jeremy Corbyn should prove he can match their stability by burning down a public building at precisely half past nine every morning, and display his strength by punching people in the face as they run out the door screaming.
But this would barely touch the Government’s record of strength and stability. For example, every year since they took over in 2010, there has been a rise in the numbers dependent on food banks, going up every year, nice and stable, not haphazardly up one year and down the next so you don’t know where you stand. And weak governments might see hungry kids and feel a pang of conscience, but not this lot because they’re like sodding Iron Man.
George Osborne was so stable he missed every target he set, not just a few or 80 per cent, but every single one because business needs predictability, and when Osborne announced a target, our wealth creators could guarantee he’d come nowhere near it.
I expect they’ll also refer every day to their universal credit scheme, which is five years behind schedule and cost £16bn. You have to be strong to lose that amount and not care. Weak people would get to £3-4bn and think “Oh dear, maybe we should stop”, but not if you’re strong and stable.
The current Chancellor is nearly as impressive. After the Tories promised that under no circumstances would they raise National Insurance, Philip Hammond then raised National Insurance and cancelled raising it a few days later as it was so unpopular, exuding the sort of strength and stability that puts you in mind of Churchill.
Boris Johnson has exhibited the same values, displaying why we can trust him to stand up to dictators such as Syria’s President Assad. After one of Assad’s military victories, Boris wrote: “I cannot conceal my elation as the news comes in from Palmyra and it is reported that the Syrian army is genuinely back in control of the entire Unesco site… any sane person should feel a sense of satisfaction at what Assad’s troops have accomplished”, in an article headlined: “Bravo for Assad – he is a vile tyrant but he has saved Palmyra from [Isis]”.
Since then, the Foreign Secretary has steadfastly stuck with maximum stability to this view, with only the mildest amendment such as: “We must bomb Assad immediately; no sane person could ever wish him to control anything unless they’re a communist terrorist mugwump.”
What a model of stability, because most military experts agree it doesn’t really matter which side you’re on in a war, as long as you don’t compromise your strength or stability by not being in the war at all.
Then there was the Prime Minister’s line on not having an election, from which she hasn’t wavered one bit, and her insistence that we had to remain in the EU, which she’s adjusted a tiny bit to insisting we can only thrive outside the EU, but always either inside or outside, and never once has she suggested we must be somewhere else such as a split in the cosmos consisting of dark antimatter in which we can be both in and out of the EU due to time and space being governed by the European Court of Human Rights.
Thankfully the Labour Party is standing up to Conservative arguments with a dynamic campaign in which they explain how miserable everyone is.
The next party political broadcast will consist of Labour leaders walking through a shopping centre in Wolverhampton, pointing at people and saying: “Look at that bloke – utterly crestfallen. That’s a Tory government for you.”
It feels as if most people have already switched off in this election, so Labour’s best hope could be to answer questions by talking about an entirely different issue. So when Diane Abbott is asked whether Labour’s plans for education have been properly costed, she says, “I’m not sure. But I’ve been reading about koala bears. Did you know they’re not bears at all but marsupials, closer to the kangaroo?”
It doesn’t help that, as in any election, the Conservatives have much greater resources. If we lived in a proper democracy, these would be evened up.
Each newspaper would have to support a different party for each election, so The Daily Telegraph might support the Greens. And the letters column would read: “Dear Sir; with regard to current controversies concerning the use of television replays in Test match cricket, which jeopardise the ultimate authority of the umpire and therefore threaten the rule of law itself, it occurs to me the most sensible way to resolve these matters might be to renationalise the railways and install 40,000 wind turbines round Sussex. Yours sincerely, Sir Bartholomew Clutterbuck.”
And if a wealthy businessman has money to donate to a party, the one it went to would be decided by lottery. So if Lord Bamford wants to contribute to society, he hands over £1m, then is thrilled to learn it’s gone to the Maoist Rastafarian Ban Fishing on Sundays Alliance.
The Conservatives would be delighted to give money to Maoists, because Mao was always strong and stable. You didn’t get him calling off a Great Leap Forward because he was offended by being called a mugwump. General Franco, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini – these are the strong and stable models to aspire to, not these weedy liberal Gandhi types, though Nelson Mandela might qualify as a figure of stability, as he kept to pretty much the same routine for 27 years.
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Labour party's hypocrisy on Corbyn
George Monbiot in The Guardian
Where are the nose-pegs this time? Those who tolerated anything the Labour party did under Blair tolerate nothing under Corbyn. Those who insisted that we should vote Labour at any cost turn their backs as it seeks to recover its principles.
They proclaimed undying loyalty when the party stood for the creeping privatisation of the NHS, the abandonment of the biggest corruption case in British history, the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, bans on peaceful protest, detention without trial, the kidnap and torture of innocent people and an illegal war in which hundreds of thousands died. They proclaim disenchantment now that it calls for the protection of the poor, the containment of the rich and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
Those who insisted that William Hague, Michael Howard and David Cameron presented an existential threat remain silent as Labour confronts a Conservative leader who makes her predecessors look like socialists.
Blair himself, forgiven so often by the party he treated as both ladder and obstacle to his own ambition, repays the favour by suggesting that some should vote for Conservatives who seek a softer Brexit. He appears to believe that the enhanced majority this would deliver to Theresa May might weaken her. So much for the great tactician.
Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is disappointing. Yes, his leadership has been marked by missed opportunities, weakness in opposition and (until recently) incoherence in proposition, as well as strategic and organisational failure. It would be foolish to deny or minimise these flaws. But it would be more foolish still to use them as a reason for granting May a mandate to destroy what remains of British decency and moderation, or for refusing to see the good that a government implementing Corbyn’s policies could do.
Of course I fear a repeat of 1983. But the popularity of Corbyn’s recent policy announcements emboldens me to believe he has a chance, albeit slight, of turning this around. His pledge to raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour is supported by 71% of people, according to a ComRes poll; raising the top rate of tax is endorsed by 62%.
Labour’s 10 pledges could, if they formed the core of its manifesto, appeal to almost everyone. They promote a theme that should resonate widely in these precarious times: security. They promise secure employment rights, secure access to housing, secure public services, a secure living world. Contrast this to what the Conservatives offer: the “fantastic insecurity” anticipated by the major funder of the Brexit campaign, the billionaire Peter Hargreaves.
I would love to elect a government led by someone competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot paper.
Could people be induced to see past the ineptitudes of Labour leadership to the underlying policies? I would argue that the record of recent decades suggests that the quality of competence in politics is overrated.
Blair’s powers of persuasion led to the Iraq war. Gordon Brown’s reputation for prudence blinded people to the financial disaster he was helping to engineer, through the confidence he vested in the banks. Cameron’s smooth assurance caused the greatest national crisis since the second world war. May’s calculating tenacity is likely to exacerbate it. After 38 years of shrill certainties presented as strength, Britain could do with some hesitation and self-doubt from a prime minister.
Corbyn’s team has been hopeless at handling the media and managing his public image. This is a massive liability, but it also reflects a noble disregard for presentation and spin. Shouldn’t we embrace it? This was the licence granted to Gordon Brown, whose inept performances on television and radio as prime minister were attributed initially to his “authenticity” and “integrity”. Never mind that he had financed the Iraq war and championed the private finance initiative, which as several of us predicted is now ripping the NHS and other public services apart. Never mind that he stood back as the banks designed exotic financial instruments. He had the confidence of the City and the billionaire press. This ensured that his ineptitude was treated as a blessing, while Corbyn’s is a curse.
I would love to elect a government led by someone both competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot paper. The choice today is between brutal efficiency in pursuit of a disastrous agenda, and gentle inefficiency in pursuit of a better world. I know which I favour.
There is much that Labour, despite its limitations, could do better in the next six weeks. It is halfway towards spelling out an inspiring vision for the future; now it needs to complete the process. It must hammer home its vision for a post-European settlement, clarifying whether or not it wants to remain within the single market (its continued equivocation on this point is another missed opportunity) and emphasising the difference between its position and the extremism, uncertainty and chaos the Conservative version of Brexit could unleash.
It should embrace the offer of a tactical alliance with other parties. The Greens have already stood aside in Ealing Central and Acton, to help the Labour MP there defend her seat. Labour should reciprocate by withdrawing from Caroline Lucas’s constituency of Brighton Pavilion. Such deals could be made all over the country: as the thinktank Compass shows, they enhance the chances of knocking the Tories out of government.
Labour’s use of new organising technologies is promising, but it should go much further. No one on the left should design their election strategy without first reading the book Rules for Revolutionaries, by two of Bernie Sanders’ campaigners. It shows how a complete outsider almost scooped the Democratic nomination, and how the same tactics could be applied with greater effect now that they have been refined. And anyone who fears what a new Conservative government might do should rally behind Labour’s unlikely figurehead to enhance his distant prospects.
The choice before us is as follows: a party that, through strong leadership and iron discipline, allows three million children to go hungry while hedge fund bosses stash their money in the Caribbean and a party that hopes, however untidily, to make this a kinder, more equal, more inclusive nation. I will vote Labour on 8 June, and I will not hold my nose. I urge you to do the same.
Where are the nose-pegs this time? Those who tolerated anything the Labour party did under Blair tolerate nothing under Corbyn. Those who insisted that we should vote Labour at any cost turn their backs as it seeks to recover its principles.
They proclaimed undying loyalty when the party stood for the creeping privatisation of the NHS, the abandonment of the biggest corruption case in British history, the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, bans on peaceful protest, detention without trial, the kidnap and torture of innocent people and an illegal war in which hundreds of thousands died. They proclaim disenchantment now that it calls for the protection of the poor, the containment of the rich and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
Those who insisted that William Hague, Michael Howard and David Cameron presented an existential threat remain silent as Labour confronts a Conservative leader who makes her predecessors look like socialists.
Blair himself, forgiven so often by the party he treated as both ladder and obstacle to his own ambition, repays the favour by suggesting that some should vote for Conservatives who seek a softer Brexit. He appears to believe that the enhanced majority this would deliver to Theresa May might weaken her. So much for the great tactician.
Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is disappointing. Yes, his leadership has been marked by missed opportunities, weakness in opposition and (until recently) incoherence in proposition, as well as strategic and organisational failure. It would be foolish to deny or minimise these flaws. But it would be more foolish still to use them as a reason for granting May a mandate to destroy what remains of British decency and moderation, or for refusing to see the good that a government implementing Corbyn’s policies could do.
Of course I fear a repeat of 1983. But the popularity of Corbyn’s recent policy announcements emboldens me to believe he has a chance, albeit slight, of turning this around. His pledge to raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour is supported by 71% of people, according to a ComRes poll; raising the top rate of tax is endorsed by 62%.
Labour’s 10 pledges could, if they formed the core of its manifesto, appeal to almost everyone. They promote a theme that should resonate widely in these precarious times: security. They promise secure employment rights, secure access to housing, secure public services, a secure living world. Contrast this to what the Conservatives offer: the “fantastic insecurity” anticipated by the major funder of the Brexit campaign, the billionaire Peter Hargreaves.
I would love to elect a government led by someone competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot paper.
Could people be induced to see past the ineptitudes of Labour leadership to the underlying policies? I would argue that the record of recent decades suggests that the quality of competence in politics is overrated.
Blair’s powers of persuasion led to the Iraq war. Gordon Brown’s reputation for prudence blinded people to the financial disaster he was helping to engineer, through the confidence he vested in the banks. Cameron’s smooth assurance caused the greatest national crisis since the second world war. May’s calculating tenacity is likely to exacerbate it. After 38 years of shrill certainties presented as strength, Britain could do with some hesitation and self-doubt from a prime minister.
Corbyn’s team has been hopeless at handling the media and managing his public image. This is a massive liability, but it also reflects a noble disregard for presentation and spin. Shouldn’t we embrace it? This was the licence granted to Gordon Brown, whose inept performances on television and radio as prime minister were attributed initially to his “authenticity” and “integrity”. Never mind that he had financed the Iraq war and championed the private finance initiative, which as several of us predicted is now ripping the NHS and other public services apart. Never mind that he stood back as the banks designed exotic financial instruments. He had the confidence of the City and the billionaire press. This ensured that his ineptitude was treated as a blessing, while Corbyn’s is a curse.
I would love to elect a government led by someone both competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot paper. The choice today is between brutal efficiency in pursuit of a disastrous agenda, and gentle inefficiency in pursuit of a better world. I know which I favour.
There is much that Labour, despite its limitations, could do better in the next six weeks. It is halfway towards spelling out an inspiring vision for the future; now it needs to complete the process. It must hammer home its vision for a post-European settlement, clarifying whether or not it wants to remain within the single market (its continued equivocation on this point is another missed opportunity) and emphasising the difference between its position and the extremism, uncertainty and chaos the Conservative version of Brexit could unleash.
It should embrace the offer of a tactical alliance with other parties. The Greens have already stood aside in Ealing Central and Acton, to help the Labour MP there defend her seat. Labour should reciprocate by withdrawing from Caroline Lucas’s constituency of Brighton Pavilion. Such deals could be made all over the country: as the thinktank Compass shows, they enhance the chances of knocking the Tories out of government.
Labour’s use of new organising technologies is promising, but it should go much further. No one on the left should design their election strategy without first reading the book Rules for Revolutionaries, by two of Bernie Sanders’ campaigners. It shows how a complete outsider almost scooped the Democratic nomination, and how the same tactics could be applied with greater effect now that they have been refined. And anyone who fears what a new Conservative government might do should rally behind Labour’s unlikely figurehead to enhance his distant prospects.
The choice before us is as follows: a party that, through strong leadership and iron discipline, allows three million children to go hungry while hedge fund bosses stash their money in the Caribbean and a party that hopes, however untidily, to make this a kinder, more equal, more inclusive nation. I will vote Labour on 8 June, and I will not hold my nose. I urge you to do the same.
Sunday 23 April 2017
Feel the burn: why do we love chilli?
Bob Holmes in The Guardian
I’ve been procrastinating. On my dining room table I have lined up three hot peppers: one habanero, flame-orange and lantern-shaped; one skinny little Thai bird’s eye chilli; and one relatively innocuous jalapeño, looking by comparison like a big green zeppelin. My mission, should I choose to accept, is to eat them.
In ordinary life, I’m at least moderately fond of hot peppers. My fridge has three kinds of salsa, a bottle of sriracha, and a jar of Szechuan hot bean paste, all of which I use regularly. But I’m not extreme: I pick the whole peppers out of my Thai curries and set them aside uneaten. And I’m a habanero virgin. Its reputation as the hottest pepper you can easily find in the grocery store has me a bit spooked, so I’ve never cooked with one, let alone eaten it neat. Still, if I’m going to write about hot peppers, I ought to have firsthand experience at the high end of the range. Plus, I’m curious, in a vaguely spectator-at-my-own-car-crash way.
When people talk about flavour, they usually focus on taste and smell. But there’s a third major flavour sense, as well, one that’s often overlooked: the physical sensations of touch, temperature and pain. The burn of chilli peppers is the most familiar example here, but there are others. Wine mavens speak of a wine’s “mouthfeel”, a concept that includes the puckery astringency of tannins – something tea drinkers also notice – and the fullness of texture that gives body to a wine. Gum chewers and peppermint fans recognise the feeling of minty coolness they get from their confections. And everyone knows the fizzy bite of carbonated drinks.
None of these sensations is a matter of smell or taste. In fact, our third primary flavour sense flies so far under our radar that even flavour wonks haven’t agreed on a single name for it. Sensory scientists are apt to refer to it as “chemesthesis”, “somatosensation”, or “trigeminal sense”, each of which covers a slightly different subset of the sense, and none of which mean much at all to the rest of the world. The common theme, though, is that all of these sensations are really manifestations of our sense of touch, and they’re surprisingly vital to our experience of flavour. Taste, smell, touch – the flavour trinity.
Sensory scientists have known for decades that chilli burn is something different from taste and smell – something more like pain. But the real breakthrough in understanding chilli burn came in 1997, when pharmacologist David Julius and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, finally identified the receptor for capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilli heat. The task demanded a lot of patience: Julius and his team took every gene active in sensory nerve cells, which respond to capsaicin, and swapped them into cultured kidney cells, which don’t. Eventually, they found a gene capable of making the kidney cells respond. The gene turned out to encode a receptor – eventually named TRPV1, and pronounced “trip-vee-one” – that is activated not just by capsaicin but also by dangerously hot temperatures. In other words, when you call a chilli pepper “hot”, that’s not just an analogy – as far as your brain can tell, your mouth really is being burned. That’s a feel, not a smell or taste, and it passes to the brain through nerves that handle the sense of touch.
Like other touch receptors, TRPV1 receptors are found all over the inner layer of your skin, where they warn you of burn risk from midsummer asphalt, baking dishes straight from the oven, and the like. But they can only pick up pepper burn where the protective outer skin is thin enough to let capsaicin enter – that is, in the mouth, eyes, and a few other places. This explains the old Hungarian saying that “good paprika burns twice”.
Further tests showed that TRPV1 responds not just to heat and capsaicin but to a variety of other “hot” foods, including black pepper and ginger. More recently, several more TRP receptors have turned up that give other food-related somatosensations. TRPA1, which Julius calls the “wasabi receptor”, causes the sensation of heat from wasabi, horseradish and mustards, as well as onions, garlic and cinnamon. TRPA1 is also responsible for the back-of throat burn that aficionados value in their extra-virgin olive oil. A good oil delivers enough of a burn to cause a catch in your throat and often a cough. In fact, olive oil tasters rate oils as “one-cough” or “two-cough” oils, with the latter getting a higher rating. (One reason wasabi feels so different from olive oil is that the sulfur-containing chemicals in wasabi are volatile, so they deliver wasabi’s characteristic “nose hit”, while non-volatile olive oil merely burns the throat. Olive oil may also trigger TRPV1 receptors to some extent.) Curiously, TRPA1 is also the heat receptor that rattlesnakes use to detect their prey on a dark night.
Chilli aficionados get pretty passionate about their pods, choosing just the right kind of chilli for each application from the dozens available. The difference among chilli varieties is partly a matter of smell and taste: some are sweeter, some are fruitier, some have a dusky depth to their flavour. But there are differences in the way they feel in your mouth, too.
One difference is obvious: heat level. Chilli experts measure a chilli’s level of burn in Scoville heat units, a scale first derived by Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacist and pharmaceutical researcher, in 1912. Working in Detroit, Scoville had the bright idea that he could measure a pepper’s hotness by diluting its extract until tasters could no longer detect the burn. The hotter the pepper was originally, the more you’d have to dilute it to wash out the burn. Pepper extract that had to be diluted just tenfold to quench the heat scores 10 Scoville heat units; a much hotter one that has to be diluted one hundred thousandfold scores 100,000 Scovilles.
How Britain has gone crazy for chillies
Nowadays, researchers usually avoid the need for expensive panels of tasters by measuring the chilli’s capsaicin content directly in the lab and converting that to Scoville units. The more capsaicin, the hotter the chilli.
However you measure it, chillies differ widely in their heat level. Anaheims and poblanos are quite mild, tipping the scale at about 500 and 1,000 Scovilles, respectively. Jalapeños come in around 5,000, serranos about 15,000, cayennes about 40,000, Thai bird’s eye chillies near 100,000, and the habanero on my table somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 Scovilles. From there, intrepid souls can venture into the truly hot, topping out with the Carolina Reaper at a staggering 2.2 million Scovilles, which approaches the potency of police-grade pepper spray.
Many chilli heads claim that a pepper’s heat is defined by more than just intensity. If anyone would know about this it would probably be Paul Bosland, the director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. As a plant breeder by trade, he has a keen professional interest in all the tiny details of how chilli heat differs from one pod to the next.
Bosland says he and his colleagues distinguish four other components to chilli heat in addition to heat level. The first is how fast the heat starts. “Most people, when they bite the habanero, it maybe takes 20 to 30 seconds before they feel the heat, whereas an Asian chilli is immediate,” he says. Chillies also differ in how long the burn lasts. Some, like jalapeños and many of the Asian varieties, fade relatively quickly; others, like habaneros, may linger for hours. Where the chilli hits you also varies. “Usually, with a jalapeño, it’s the tip of your tongue and lips, with New Mexico pod types it’s in the middle of the mouth, and with a habanero it’s at the back,” says Bosland. And fourth, Bosland and his crew distinguish between “sharp” and “flat” qualities of burn. “Sharp is like pins sticking in your mouth, while flat is like a paintbrush,” he says. New Mexico chillies tend to be flat while Asian ones tend to be sharp.
For women, there’s no social status to being able to eat the hottest chilli pepper, while for men there is Professor John Hayes, University of Pennsylvania
It’s time to take the plunge. First up, the jalapeño. As you’d expect from its relatively wimpy ranking in the hot pepper standings, it gives only a mild burn, which builds gently and mostly at the front of the mouth. Confronted with such a tame burn, I have plenty of attention left to focus on its thick, crisp flesh and sweet, almost bell-peppery flavour. The Thai bird’s-eye chilli, second on my list, is much smaller, and its flesh proves to be much thinner and tougher. Despite that, though, it almost immediately lets loose a blast of heat that explodes to fill my mouth from front to back, making me gasp for breath. No gradual build to this one – it’s a sledgehammer blow. If I think hard, I might imagine that the chilli heat is a little bit sharper, pricklier, than the jalapeño. But I could just be fooling myself.
Finally, the one I’ve been dreading, the habanero. I cut a tiny slice and start chewing. The first thing that strikes me is how different the flavour is. Instead of a vegetal, bell pepper flavour, the habanero gives me a much sweeter, fruitier impression that’s surprisingly pleasant. For about 15 or 20 seconds, anyway – and then, slowly but inexorably, the heat builds. And builds. And builds, long after I’ve swallowed the slice of pepper itself, until I can’t think of much else besides the fire that fills my mouth. It definitely hits farther back in the mouth than the Thai chilli, though there’s a late-breaking flare-up on my tongue as well. The whole experience lasts five or 10 minutes, and even a good half hour later it’s as though coals are gently banked in my mouth.
Having set my mouth afire, I’d now like to quench the burn. Surprisingly, scientists can’t offer a whole lot of help in this regard. A cold drink certainly helps, because the coolness calms the heat-sensing TRPV1 receptors that capsaicin excites. The only problem – as you’ve no doubt noticed if you’ve tried to cope with a chilli burn this way – is that the effect goes away in just a few seconds, as your mouth returns to normal body temperature. You’ve probably heard, too, that sugar and fat help douse the fire, but the researchers themselves aren’t entirely convinced.
“The best thing out there is probably cold, whole milk,” says John Hayes of the department of food science at the University of Pennsylvania. “The cold is going to help mask the burn, the viscosity is going to mask the burn, and the fat is going to pull the capsaicin off the receptor.” When pressed, though, he notes that there’s not a lot of data to back that up.
Making a food more viscous has been shown to damp down taste – probably just because it provides a competing sensation to distract our attention, Hayes notes, but he can’t think of anyone who’s tested whether it also reduces chilli burn. And he’s not entirely sure that sugar really helps, either. “I’m not convinced that it actually knocks the heat down, or whether it just makes it more pleasant,” he says. Even the value of fats or oils – which sounds like they ought to help wash capsaicin, which is fat soluble, off the receptors – is in dispute. If you’re feeling the burn, says Bruce Bryant of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, the capsaicin has already penetrated your tissue, so a superficial rinse of whole milk or olive oil isn’t going to help much.
Millions of people actively seek out the pain of hot chillies as a form of pleasure. The burn features prominently in more than a few of the world’s great cuisines, with more than a quarter of the world’s population eating hot peppers daily. Britain spends £20m annually on hot sauce.
We don’t take pleasure in eating food that’s still searingly hot from the oven, even though that delivers exactly the same sensation we get from chillies: same receptors, same nerves. We don’t choose to chemically burn our tongues with strong acids. So why do we happily, even eagerly, inflict pain by chillies? Whatever the secret is, it seems to be unique to humans. No other mammal on the planet has a similar taste for chillies. (Birds eat them enthusiastically, but only because they lack receptors that respond to capsaicin. To a parakeet, the hottest habanero is as bland as a bell pepper.)
One possible explanation is that chilli lovers simply don’t feel the pain as intensely as those who shun hot peppers. In the lab, it’s certainly true that people who are repeatedly exposed to capsaicin become less sensitive to it. Genetics may play some part, too. Studies of identical twins (who share all their genes) and fraternal twins (who share only half) suggest that genes account for 18-58% of our liking for chilli peppers. Some people may have more sensitive TRPV1 receptors, for example – though Hayes, who’s looking into that now, says: “The jury is really still out on whether there is meaningful TRPV1 variation.”
It’s abundantly clear, though, that chilli lovers aren’t immune to the pain. Just ask one. “I like it so all my pores open up and tears are rolling down my face,” says Hayes. “But with two young kids in the house, I don’t get that very often.” For now, Hayes makes do with a handy bottle of sriracha hot sauce. “My kids refer to it as Daddy’s ketchup,” he says.
It’s clear from listening to Hayes that he – and probably most other chilli eaters – actively enjoys the pain. That paradox has drawn the attention of psychologists for several decades now. Back in the 1980s, psychologist and pioneering chilli researcher Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania proposed that chilli eating is a form of “benign masochism”, like watching a scary movie or riding a roller coaster. After all, most forms of pain are warnings of imminent harm. That baked potato still steaming from the oven is hot enough to kill the cells lining your mouth, potentially causing permanent damage. But chilli burn – except at its uppermost, million-Scoville extreme – is a false alarm: a way to get the thrill of living on the edge without the risk of exposing yourself to real danger.
A few decades later, Hayes and his student Nadia Byrnes (perhaps the best name ever for a hot pepper researcher) took Rozin’s ball and ran with it. If chilli heads are looking for thrills, Byrnes and Hayes reasoned, you’d expect them to have sensation-seeking personalities. And, sure enough, when they went to the vast arsenal of tests that psychologists have developed to measure facets of personality, they found several measures of sensation seeking, of which the latest and best was the Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking. Then they set out to see whether chilli lovers really do crave excitement.
When Byrnes and Hayes tested nearly 250 volunteers, they found that chilli lovers were indeed more likely to be sensation seekers than people who avoided chillies. And it’s not just that sensation seekers approach all of life with more gusto – the effect was specific to chillies. When it came to more boring foods like candy floss, hot dogs or skimmed milk, the sensation seekers were no more likely to partake than their more timid confreres.
Chilli eaters also tended to score higher on another aspect of personality called sensitivity to reward, which measures how drawn we are to praise, attention and other external reinforcement. And when the researchers looked more closely, an interesting pattern emerged: sensation seeking was the best predictor of chilli eating in women, while in men, sensitivity to reward was the better predictor.
Hayes thinks that’s because machismo plays a role in the chilli eating of men, but not women. “For women, there’s no social status to being able to eat the hottest chilli pepper, while for men there is,” he speculates. Without the heavy hand of machismo on the scales, women’s chilli eating is more strongly governed by their internal drive for excitement.
Incidentally, while chilli lovers laud the rush they get from a spicy dish, and sometimes claim the peppers “wake up” their palate to other flavours, you’ll often hear chilli-averse people complain that the burn keeps them from savouring other flavours in their meal. Which is it? The matter has received surprisingly little scientific study, but the bottom line seems to be that if capsaicin blocks other flavours, the effect is small. Most likely, when people complain that they “can’t taste as well” after a spicy mouthful, it’s largely because they’re paying so much attention to the unfamiliar burn that the other flavours fly under the radar. In other words, it’s not “hot” but “too hot” that interferes with the enjoyment of flavour – and the threshold where hot becomes too hot is a very personal one.
I’ve been procrastinating. On my dining room table I have lined up three hot peppers: one habanero, flame-orange and lantern-shaped; one skinny little Thai bird’s eye chilli; and one relatively innocuous jalapeño, looking by comparison like a big green zeppelin. My mission, should I choose to accept, is to eat them.
In ordinary life, I’m at least moderately fond of hot peppers. My fridge has three kinds of salsa, a bottle of sriracha, and a jar of Szechuan hot bean paste, all of which I use regularly. But I’m not extreme: I pick the whole peppers out of my Thai curries and set them aside uneaten. And I’m a habanero virgin. Its reputation as the hottest pepper you can easily find in the grocery store has me a bit spooked, so I’ve never cooked with one, let alone eaten it neat. Still, if I’m going to write about hot peppers, I ought to have firsthand experience at the high end of the range. Plus, I’m curious, in a vaguely spectator-at-my-own-car-crash way.
When people talk about flavour, they usually focus on taste and smell. But there’s a third major flavour sense, as well, one that’s often overlooked: the physical sensations of touch, temperature and pain. The burn of chilli peppers is the most familiar example here, but there are others. Wine mavens speak of a wine’s “mouthfeel”, a concept that includes the puckery astringency of tannins – something tea drinkers also notice – and the fullness of texture that gives body to a wine. Gum chewers and peppermint fans recognise the feeling of minty coolness they get from their confections. And everyone knows the fizzy bite of carbonated drinks.
None of these sensations is a matter of smell or taste. In fact, our third primary flavour sense flies so far under our radar that even flavour wonks haven’t agreed on a single name for it. Sensory scientists are apt to refer to it as “chemesthesis”, “somatosensation”, or “trigeminal sense”, each of which covers a slightly different subset of the sense, and none of which mean much at all to the rest of the world. The common theme, though, is that all of these sensations are really manifestations of our sense of touch, and they’re surprisingly vital to our experience of flavour. Taste, smell, touch – the flavour trinity.
Sensory scientists have known for decades that chilli burn is something different from taste and smell – something more like pain. But the real breakthrough in understanding chilli burn came in 1997, when pharmacologist David Julius and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, finally identified the receptor for capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilli heat. The task demanded a lot of patience: Julius and his team took every gene active in sensory nerve cells, which respond to capsaicin, and swapped them into cultured kidney cells, which don’t. Eventually, they found a gene capable of making the kidney cells respond. The gene turned out to encode a receptor – eventually named TRPV1, and pronounced “trip-vee-one” – that is activated not just by capsaicin but also by dangerously hot temperatures. In other words, when you call a chilli pepper “hot”, that’s not just an analogy – as far as your brain can tell, your mouth really is being burned. That’s a feel, not a smell or taste, and it passes to the brain through nerves that handle the sense of touch.
Like other touch receptors, TRPV1 receptors are found all over the inner layer of your skin, where they warn you of burn risk from midsummer asphalt, baking dishes straight from the oven, and the like. But they can only pick up pepper burn where the protective outer skin is thin enough to let capsaicin enter – that is, in the mouth, eyes, and a few other places. This explains the old Hungarian saying that “good paprika burns twice”.
Further tests showed that TRPV1 responds not just to heat and capsaicin but to a variety of other “hot” foods, including black pepper and ginger. More recently, several more TRP receptors have turned up that give other food-related somatosensations. TRPA1, which Julius calls the “wasabi receptor”, causes the sensation of heat from wasabi, horseradish and mustards, as well as onions, garlic and cinnamon. TRPA1 is also responsible for the back-of throat burn that aficionados value in their extra-virgin olive oil. A good oil delivers enough of a burn to cause a catch in your throat and often a cough. In fact, olive oil tasters rate oils as “one-cough” or “two-cough” oils, with the latter getting a higher rating. (One reason wasabi feels so different from olive oil is that the sulfur-containing chemicals in wasabi are volatile, so they deliver wasabi’s characteristic “nose hit”, while non-volatile olive oil merely burns the throat. Olive oil may also trigger TRPV1 receptors to some extent.) Curiously, TRPA1 is also the heat receptor that rattlesnakes use to detect their prey on a dark night.
Chilli aficionados get pretty passionate about their pods, choosing just the right kind of chilli for each application from the dozens available. The difference among chilli varieties is partly a matter of smell and taste: some are sweeter, some are fruitier, some have a dusky depth to their flavour. But there are differences in the way they feel in your mouth, too.
One difference is obvious: heat level. Chilli experts measure a chilli’s level of burn in Scoville heat units, a scale first derived by Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacist and pharmaceutical researcher, in 1912. Working in Detroit, Scoville had the bright idea that he could measure a pepper’s hotness by diluting its extract until tasters could no longer detect the burn. The hotter the pepper was originally, the more you’d have to dilute it to wash out the burn. Pepper extract that had to be diluted just tenfold to quench the heat scores 10 Scoville heat units; a much hotter one that has to be diluted one hundred thousandfold scores 100,000 Scovilles.
How Britain has gone crazy for chillies
Nowadays, researchers usually avoid the need for expensive panels of tasters by measuring the chilli’s capsaicin content directly in the lab and converting that to Scoville units. The more capsaicin, the hotter the chilli.
However you measure it, chillies differ widely in their heat level. Anaheims and poblanos are quite mild, tipping the scale at about 500 and 1,000 Scovilles, respectively. Jalapeños come in around 5,000, serranos about 15,000, cayennes about 40,000, Thai bird’s eye chillies near 100,000, and the habanero on my table somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 Scovilles. From there, intrepid souls can venture into the truly hot, topping out with the Carolina Reaper at a staggering 2.2 million Scovilles, which approaches the potency of police-grade pepper spray.
Many chilli heads claim that a pepper’s heat is defined by more than just intensity. If anyone would know about this it would probably be Paul Bosland, the director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. As a plant breeder by trade, he has a keen professional interest in all the tiny details of how chilli heat differs from one pod to the next.
Bosland says he and his colleagues distinguish four other components to chilli heat in addition to heat level. The first is how fast the heat starts. “Most people, when they bite the habanero, it maybe takes 20 to 30 seconds before they feel the heat, whereas an Asian chilli is immediate,” he says. Chillies also differ in how long the burn lasts. Some, like jalapeños and many of the Asian varieties, fade relatively quickly; others, like habaneros, may linger for hours. Where the chilli hits you also varies. “Usually, with a jalapeño, it’s the tip of your tongue and lips, with New Mexico pod types it’s in the middle of the mouth, and with a habanero it’s at the back,” says Bosland. And fourth, Bosland and his crew distinguish between “sharp” and “flat” qualities of burn. “Sharp is like pins sticking in your mouth, while flat is like a paintbrush,” he says. New Mexico chillies tend to be flat while Asian ones tend to be sharp.
For women, there’s no social status to being able to eat the hottest chilli pepper, while for men there is Professor John Hayes, University of Pennsylvania
It’s time to take the plunge. First up, the jalapeño. As you’d expect from its relatively wimpy ranking in the hot pepper standings, it gives only a mild burn, which builds gently and mostly at the front of the mouth. Confronted with such a tame burn, I have plenty of attention left to focus on its thick, crisp flesh and sweet, almost bell-peppery flavour. The Thai bird’s-eye chilli, second on my list, is much smaller, and its flesh proves to be much thinner and tougher. Despite that, though, it almost immediately lets loose a blast of heat that explodes to fill my mouth from front to back, making me gasp for breath. No gradual build to this one – it’s a sledgehammer blow. If I think hard, I might imagine that the chilli heat is a little bit sharper, pricklier, than the jalapeño. But I could just be fooling myself.
Finally, the one I’ve been dreading, the habanero. I cut a tiny slice and start chewing. The first thing that strikes me is how different the flavour is. Instead of a vegetal, bell pepper flavour, the habanero gives me a much sweeter, fruitier impression that’s surprisingly pleasant. For about 15 or 20 seconds, anyway – and then, slowly but inexorably, the heat builds. And builds. And builds, long after I’ve swallowed the slice of pepper itself, until I can’t think of much else besides the fire that fills my mouth. It definitely hits farther back in the mouth than the Thai chilli, though there’s a late-breaking flare-up on my tongue as well. The whole experience lasts five or 10 minutes, and even a good half hour later it’s as though coals are gently banked in my mouth.
Having set my mouth afire, I’d now like to quench the burn. Surprisingly, scientists can’t offer a whole lot of help in this regard. A cold drink certainly helps, because the coolness calms the heat-sensing TRPV1 receptors that capsaicin excites. The only problem – as you’ve no doubt noticed if you’ve tried to cope with a chilli burn this way – is that the effect goes away in just a few seconds, as your mouth returns to normal body temperature. You’ve probably heard, too, that sugar and fat help douse the fire, but the researchers themselves aren’t entirely convinced.
“The best thing out there is probably cold, whole milk,” says John Hayes of the department of food science at the University of Pennsylvania. “The cold is going to help mask the burn, the viscosity is going to mask the burn, and the fat is going to pull the capsaicin off the receptor.” When pressed, though, he notes that there’s not a lot of data to back that up.
Making a food more viscous has been shown to damp down taste – probably just because it provides a competing sensation to distract our attention, Hayes notes, but he can’t think of anyone who’s tested whether it also reduces chilli burn. And he’s not entirely sure that sugar really helps, either. “I’m not convinced that it actually knocks the heat down, or whether it just makes it more pleasant,” he says. Even the value of fats or oils – which sounds like they ought to help wash capsaicin, which is fat soluble, off the receptors – is in dispute. If you’re feeling the burn, says Bruce Bryant of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, the capsaicin has already penetrated your tissue, so a superficial rinse of whole milk or olive oil isn’t going to help much.
Millions of people actively seek out the pain of hot chillies as a form of pleasure. The burn features prominently in more than a few of the world’s great cuisines, with more than a quarter of the world’s population eating hot peppers daily. Britain spends £20m annually on hot sauce.
We don’t take pleasure in eating food that’s still searingly hot from the oven, even though that delivers exactly the same sensation we get from chillies: same receptors, same nerves. We don’t choose to chemically burn our tongues with strong acids. So why do we happily, even eagerly, inflict pain by chillies? Whatever the secret is, it seems to be unique to humans. No other mammal on the planet has a similar taste for chillies. (Birds eat them enthusiastically, but only because they lack receptors that respond to capsaicin. To a parakeet, the hottest habanero is as bland as a bell pepper.)
One possible explanation is that chilli lovers simply don’t feel the pain as intensely as those who shun hot peppers. In the lab, it’s certainly true that people who are repeatedly exposed to capsaicin become less sensitive to it. Genetics may play some part, too. Studies of identical twins (who share all their genes) and fraternal twins (who share only half) suggest that genes account for 18-58% of our liking for chilli peppers. Some people may have more sensitive TRPV1 receptors, for example – though Hayes, who’s looking into that now, says: “The jury is really still out on whether there is meaningful TRPV1 variation.”
It’s abundantly clear, though, that chilli lovers aren’t immune to the pain. Just ask one. “I like it so all my pores open up and tears are rolling down my face,” says Hayes. “But with two young kids in the house, I don’t get that very often.” For now, Hayes makes do with a handy bottle of sriracha hot sauce. “My kids refer to it as Daddy’s ketchup,” he says.
It’s clear from listening to Hayes that he – and probably most other chilli eaters – actively enjoys the pain. That paradox has drawn the attention of psychologists for several decades now. Back in the 1980s, psychologist and pioneering chilli researcher Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania proposed that chilli eating is a form of “benign masochism”, like watching a scary movie or riding a roller coaster. After all, most forms of pain are warnings of imminent harm. That baked potato still steaming from the oven is hot enough to kill the cells lining your mouth, potentially causing permanent damage. But chilli burn – except at its uppermost, million-Scoville extreme – is a false alarm: a way to get the thrill of living on the edge without the risk of exposing yourself to real danger.
A few decades later, Hayes and his student Nadia Byrnes (perhaps the best name ever for a hot pepper researcher) took Rozin’s ball and ran with it. If chilli heads are looking for thrills, Byrnes and Hayes reasoned, you’d expect them to have sensation-seeking personalities. And, sure enough, when they went to the vast arsenal of tests that psychologists have developed to measure facets of personality, they found several measures of sensation seeking, of which the latest and best was the Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking. Then they set out to see whether chilli lovers really do crave excitement.
When Byrnes and Hayes tested nearly 250 volunteers, they found that chilli lovers were indeed more likely to be sensation seekers than people who avoided chillies. And it’s not just that sensation seekers approach all of life with more gusto – the effect was specific to chillies. When it came to more boring foods like candy floss, hot dogs or skimmed milk, the sensation seekers were no more likely to partake than their more timid confreres.
Chilli eaters also tended to score higher on another aspect of personality called sensitivity to reward, which measures how drawn we are to praise, attention and other external reinforcement. And when the researchers looked more closely, an interesting pattern emerged: sensation seeking was the best predictor of chilli eating in women, while in men, sensitivity to reward was the better predictor.
Hayes thinks that’s because machismo plays a role in the chilli eating of men, but not women. “For women, there’s no social status to being able to eat the hottest chilli pepper, while for men there is,” he speculates. Without the heavy hand of machismo on the scales, women’s chilli eating is more strongly governed by their internal drive for excitement.
Incidentally, while chilli lovers laud the rush they get from a spicy dish, and sometimes claim the peppers “wake up” their palate to other flavours, you’ll often hear chilli-averse people complain that the burn keeps them from savouring other flavours in their meal. Which is it? The matter has received surprisingly little scientific study, but the bottom line seems to be that if capsaicin blocks other flavours, the effect is small. Most likely, when people complain that they “can’t taste as well” after a spicy mouthful, it’s largely because they’re paying so much attention to the unfamiliar burn that the other flavours fly under the radar. In other words, it’s not “hot” but “too hot” that interferes with the enjoyment of flavour – and the threshold where hot becomes too hot is a very personal one.
Saturday 22 April 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)