Professor (emeritus) of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul Rozin has had many interests in his career: food selection in animals, the acquisition of literacy in children, and more.
A major interest has been in food. Most recently, disgust has been a focus; but one of the first aspects related to food that Paul Rozin studied had been the chile peppers.
Why would people (learn to) like something that all other mammals avoided whenever they could?
Out of that came the (at least among lovers of spicy foods) famous hypothesis of “benign masochism”…
Further Reading
Paul Rozin’s official UPenn profile
Very nice article about Paul Rozin on 34th Street: “Meet Professor Paul Rozin, the Guru of Food Psychology”
“The Psychology of a Meal and How To Make a Meal Memorable”, video of one of Paul Rozin’s talks at the MAD Symposium