Liking oral cold and hot irritant sensations: specificity to type of irritant and locus of stimulation

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Abstract
Humans commonly come to enjoy experiencing the innately unpalatable oral sensations produced by the consumption of ‘hot’ irritants (e.g. chilli pepper, hot mustard and horseradish), and ‘cold’ irritants (menthol). We explore the extent to which irritant preferences reflect an underlying tendency to reverse innate aversions to oral sensations, and the extent to which reversal of oral aversions is related to liking for irritation or temperature change on the body surface, by examining individual differences in patterns of liking for these experiences. There are substantial correlations of liking for either hot or cold irritation produced by different agents in the mouth or nose. However, liking for hot irritants is uncorrelated with liking for cold irritants. Liking for the oral cold irritation effect of menthol is only weakly related to liking for the sensations produced by menthol on the body surface. Neither liking for hot nor cold irritants is related to liking for sudden temperature changes on the whole body surface (e.g. the sensation produced by jumping into cold water). A two-dimensional multidimensional scaling of liking for irritation and temperature changes suggests three clusters of items: hot oral irritants, cold irritant (menthol) naso-orally or on the skin surface and total body temperature change (hot or cold).

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