eli5: what makes people physically cringe to different things?

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I am not talking about cringing to someone’s behaviour, I am interested in why, for example, I physically cannot stand touching raw flour and start immediately cringing, whereas my girlfriend has no problems with that but starts cringing at the sound of styrofoam being dragged againsz another surface.

Other common examples include chalk and chalk sounds, material such as linen etc.

Is it our brains being wired differently because I don’t see it being because of some past trauma since it seems so banal and trite yet it is tough if not impossible to ignore and/or get over.

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Our brains are absolutely wired differently and respond differently to stimuli. For things like spiders and heights and things like that a lot of times those behaviors tend to be learned from people who influenced us or media. My mother wasn’t remotely afraid of spiders or snakes or any of that stuff and so as a woman I am not either. But as far as nails on a chalkboard and things like that, that’s just our own hard wiring that interprets that sound in a certain way that somebody else’s brain does not interpret it as.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Our brains are absolutely wired differently and respond differently to stimuli. For things like spiders and heights and things like that a lot of times those behaviors tend to be learned from people who influenced us or media. My mother wasn’t remotely afraid of spiders or snakes or any of that stuff and so as a woman I am not either. But as far as nails on a chalkboard and things like that, that’s just our own hard wiring that interprets that sound in a certain way that somebody else’s brain does not interpret it as.