When I’m riding an elevator, and think I’mnat the destination floor, but it turns out I’m not, I get this weird feeling in my stomach, like I’m falling or that I lost balance for a millisecond.
It’s similar to the feeling I get when I’m going up a staircase and think there’s an extra step, but it turns out there isn’t any. Although, in the stairs situation, there’s actual movement associated with the feeling, but in the elevator situation, I get the feeling even when I don’t start to step outside.
Are both feelings related to the broken escalator phenomenon?
In: Biology
Your body expects a sudden acceleration as you approach your floor and braces itself for it. When that doesn’t happen, your brain interprets that lack of acceleration as actual acceleration in the opposite direction. If you’d never been on an elevator before, you would get that falling sensation when you get to your floor because your body *doesn’t* know to correct for it.
The broken escalator is exactly the same thing. Your experience with them makes you expect the ground to start moving, so you use the appropriate muscles to keep yourself from falling over on it. When you find yourself standing still instead, your muscles and inner ear take time to readjust.
One more example that you might not have realized: Driving a car versus being the passenger. When you’re in the passenger’s seat, you’ll feel your body getting thrown in every which direction whenever it takes a turn or goes faster or slower. That doesn’t happen when you’re in the driver’s seat, though. There, you know exactly when you’ll feel a force to the side when you turn the steering wheel or forward when you brake or backward when you hit the gas. Your muscles again brace themselves to compensate for it so that you stay upright in your seat. When you’re not the one steering, you don’t get that same expectation, so you can’t unconsciously brace.
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