Forget zodiac signs and fortune tellers – just order a pizza next time you want to find out about someone.
British pizza chain Pizza Express commissioned a survey of people’s personalities and pizza preferences from among their menu choices and had it analyzed, resulting in a fun way to quickly determine parts of not only your own personality, but also of those around you, whether it’s on a first date or business meeting.
These findings are the latest in a series of surveys about smells, taste and personality, like one that claims that the smell of jasmine improved the batting for some major league baseball players. Take from that, and these pizza findings, what you will.
For this survey, 500 British adults residing or visiting the United States aged between 18 and 65 filled out several standardized psychiatric and personality tests, like the Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) to determine their personality, as well as providing their pizza topping preferences to Dr. Alan Hirsch at The Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. Hirsch also collected their spouses’ personality and pizza preferences to determine romantic compatibilities between toppings.
“With food, whether it’s ice cream or pizza or something else, the thing that demands you to choose one over the other is not the nutrient value – because they’re pretty much all the same. You choose one because you like it more. That means you prefer the taste, and why? Because it’s your inner personality being represented based on your expression of it,” said Hirsch, who is a neurologist and psychiatrist. “Our food preferences develop at ages zero to 7, which is the same time our personality develops, too. It makes a lot of sense.”
Hirsch claims that you can quickly learn about a person by looking at what food that person chooses. So read on to see what your favorite pizza topping says about your personality according to this survey, and what it says about who you should be associating with. No word yet, though, on the plain or everything pizza lovers – looks like those folks are fresh out of personality.
Veggie Pizza
Flirtatious, charming, can be a little gullible, self-absorbed. Most romantically compatible with seafood pizza lovers.
Seafood Pizza
Principled, intelligent, critical. Most romantically compatible with meat pizza lovers.
Meat Pizza
Homebody, supportive, a follower. Most romantically compatible with white pizza lovers.
White Pizza
Good with money, cautious, can be a little cynical, loves a debate. Most romantically compatible with meat pizza lovers.
Pepperoni Pizza
Extrovert but can get a little bored easily. Most romantically compatible with veggie pizza lovers.
Chicken Pizza
Driven, competitive, assertive. Most romantically compatible with seafood pizza lovers.
Egg Pizza
Loving, supportive, trustworthy, avoids the spotlight. Most romantically compatible with white pizza lovers.