Lemon test: are you an introvert or extrovert?

Hans Jürgen Eysenck was the first author to include the “introversion/extraversion” dimension in his factor model of personality. In addition, he developed numerous personality tests to evaluate the dimensions of his model. Can you imagine Eysenck’s face when he found out, after having created many tests, that one of “his” dimensions can be measured with a few drops of juice, like the lemon test does?

You can do this test easily at home. You only need a Q-tip, a piece of thread and a little lemon juice. It will take you a couple of minutes. And not It can not only tell you if you are an introvert or extrovert, but it is also capable of defining your degree of empathy!

How to perform the lemon test

The first thing you should do is Take the stick and tie the thread in the middle, to be able to suspend it in the air. Once this is done, rest one of its ends on your tongue for twenty seconds. Next, pour five drops of lemon juice on your tongue and swallow. Then, rest the other end of the swab on your tongue for another twenty seconds.

The next thing you have to do is, when you take it out of your mouth, keep it suspended in the air by holding the thread. Is about see which of the two extremes weighs more. The stick will probably spin and you’ll end up getting confused about which end you put before and after the juice. For this reason, we recommend that, before starting, you make a mark of a different color at each of the ends.

When you suspend the swab in the air, two things can happen: the end you placed on it after adding the juice drops weighs more and the swab tilts; or, on the contrary, that it remains horizontal. If it stays horizontal, it means you are extroverted. However, If the stick tilts toward the wet end after the juice, it means you are an introvert..

Interpretation of the results for the introversion/extraversion dimension

What does it mean that the juice side weighs more? It means that you have salivated more over lemon juice than an extrovert. But let’s see why this happens.

Eysenck believed that one of the basic differences between introverts and extroverts was found in physiology, in the basal level of cortical activation. He considered that extroverts have a chronically low level of cortical activation and, therefore, they seek high intensity stimulation to compensate for their low activation. In addition, they tend to respond less intensely to stimuli.

On the contrary, the basal activation of introverts, according to Eysenck, is higher, and therefore they prefer calmer or solitary activities and gentler stimuli to keep their high activation “at bay.” Introverts tend to respond more intensely to stimuli. This is what he called cortical activation theory.

Translating it to lemon and to understand ourselves: let’s consider lemon juice as a stimulus of medium intensity. An extrovert, when faced with a stimulus of medium intensity, will not experience great activation, that is, they will not salivate much, since they need more powerful stimulations. On the other hand, an introvert will tend to respond much more intensely, salivating more than an extrovert.

The explanation seems logical. And this tendency has been observed for introverts to react more intensely than extroverts to certain sensory stimuli. However, It has not been possible to demonstrate that these had a higher level of basal cortical activation than extroverts..

So, If you thought that a lemon was going to reveal great secrets about your personality, you were wrong., just like its famous creator. What it can do is show how sensitive you are to stimuli and how intensely you respond to them.

What can the lemon test tell us about our level of empathy?

In a study published in Psychiatry research, they conducted an experiment to measure people’s level of empathy. The experiment consisted of watch some videos with some cotton in the mouth. In one of the videos, the protagonist was doing an exercise of moving colored balls from one place to another. In the other video, the protagonist appeared cutting a lemon and eating it.

The results showed, first of all, that The participants salivated more watching the video in which the subject eats the lemon. This occurs due to “autonomic resonance”, which is the tendency to unconsciously and automatically imitate the physiological states of other people.

This ability is determined by the activity of our magnificent mirror neurons.an activity that goes far beyond making us yawn when others yawn.

Secondly, they found not only that we salivate more when watching another person eat, but also that not all of us do so with the same intensity. The most empathetic people salivated more than less empathetic people.

Doing the experiment on your own wouldn’t make much sense, since there is no standard amount of saliva that an empathic person emits. But you could do it with other people to compare the results. You might be surprised!

For the curious…

At the beginning of the article I invited you to imagine Eysenck’s face when learning about this test that few professionals give validity to. Well, the most curious thing is that It was Eysenck himself and his wife Sybil who, in 1960, performed this test for the first time.. Although the truth is that they used a little more “professional” materials.

The objective of the test was to verify the theory of cortical activationwhich is precisely what explains why the lemon test works.

As we have seen, This test is not going to reveal our deepest secrets, but it can give us clues about how sensitive we are., both to a stimulus and to the physiological states of the people we observe or have around us. I invite you to do the experiment and check if what your saliva says is similar to what you think about yourself.

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