What causes people to have things that ‘go through them’ such as not being able to touch polystyrene or the sound of ice scraping in a freezer?
In: Biology
We can be trained by association. If every time you touch a banana I beat you with a stick you will not be able to stand touching a banana after a few trials depending on how fast you learn that bananas = stick. If that happens when you are young, you might not even know why you don’t like touching bananas. And it does not have to be that dramatic. You could learn an association at any time and for purely emotional reasons. Maybe you heard ice scraping and it was on they day your friend’s mother died and now you associate that sound with a bad feeling. It could be something as simple as playing with Styrofoam and then getting sick from eating something and your brain makes that association that styrofoam is bad to touch. There would be an evolutionary advantage to this type of training because it would be a quick way to learn what dangers to avoid in the environment but it just goes a little sideways and makes you afraid of something that isn’t harmful.
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