Author Archives: Anita Lung

Taste Aversion

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How you ever ate something and “got” sick because of it and decided never again to eat it? Well I have. I remember in eighth grade, I decided to go out with my friends to eat at this new noodle soup downtown before we headed out to a party. I ordered the pho with raw beef, and meatballs. It was extremely delicious because I have always loved eating pho. After eating, we went to my friend’s house, Jennifer to get dressed up. We arrived at the party and several hours have passed. I was currently dancing with the cutest guy in the school, Dylan. Suddenly, I felt extremely ill. My stomach was turning and I was experiencing nausea. I was constantly going to the bathroom to vomit. That nausea killed my night from dancing with Dylan! For years after that incident, I started to hate pho.  In psychology, it would be known that I have developed a taste aversion to pho. Although, I was not definitely sure that it was the pho that made me sick to the stomach, I believed it at that time because it was the only thing I had consume all day.

 

I learned the concept of taste aversion from an example that Professor Wede explained to us involving wolves and sheep. It all started when the wolves were consuming all the sheep in a constant fashion that led psychologists performed taste aversion to keep the wolves from eating all the sheep. They fed the wolves pieces of sheep meat that had poison in it which caused the wolves to become ill. This caused the wolves to be afraid to eat the sheep because they associated sheep meat with becoming ill. Just like me, after the incident of eating pho that day, I stop eating pho because I did not want to feel the same sickness I was feeling that day. The wolves and my experiences involved taste aversion.

 

Taste aversion is a type of classical conditioning that involves the learned association between a taste of something and nausea. This technique is unique because it only requires one pairing of neutral stimulus (taste of the food) with the unconditioned response (an illness) to keep that connection of the two for a long period of time. Researchers (Garcia) developed this concept through many experiments with laboratory rats. In the experiments, before the laboratory rats were exposed to radiation or injected with a drug, which will cause nausea, they were given a liquid that was particularly sweet. The laboratory rats then developed a taste aversion for the liquid in which they did not come close to the liquid ever again. Once again, the rats, the wolves, and I grew hatred for a particular stimulus because of an unconditioned stimulus (developing sickness).

Hindsight Bias

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It was close to January in high school. I was sitting in my living room waiting for the mailman to come by. I was waiting on the acceptance letter to the college. The college I desired to attend was the great school named Penn State University. I was extremely nervous because I really wanted attend this school and had no idea what the results were going to be. The mail comes in. I GOT ACCEPTED.  I happily jumped around and immediately ran to my mother and told her the amazing news. She replied, “I knew you were going to get in!” She congratulated me and explained how it was no surprise to her. Later that day, I also shared this news with my father. In the middle of my conversation, my dad blurted out and said that “to think your mom was talking to me about her doubts about you getting into Penn State earlier this week.”

What occurred with my mom in psychology is called hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is referred to the tendency to overestimate their ability to predict what will occur when they could not have actually predicted what occurred. In hindsight bias, many people would say, “I knew it!” making it seem like they made a correct guess in what occurred. This is when people believe that they knew that they predicted what had happened after the event has already occurred.

This phenomenon is also referred as the knew-it-all-along effect. The phenomenon of hindsight bias is an example of constructive-processing view. Constructive-processing view is the retrieval of memories in which those memories are altered, revised, or influenced by newer information.  Through my case, it would have been impossible for my mom to know that I had got accepted or not. She was influenced by the hindsight bias effect by falsely believing that she knew the outcome of my acceptance to Penn State because she placed her knowledge of the event’s true outcome into her memories through revision of older memories to include the newer information.

 

Ciccarelli, Saundra K., and J. Noland White. Psychology. Third ed. N.p.: Pearson, n.d. Print.

 

 

Illusory Correlaton – Superstitions

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When we, humans perceive a relationship of two variables is called an illusory correlation. Our minds make connections that actually don’t exist. We think we see a correlation but in fact it is not there. On popular type of illusory correlation are superstitions. We, humans make connections and interpret things to form understandings of life; this is what we called superstitions. There are superstitions about a lot of things like health and luck. For example, they say if you find a four-leaf clover, you will have luck on your side. But this is not necessarily true. Finding a four-leaf clover has no relationship to luck.

 

Since I am born of an Asian family was traditional and has lots of superstitions. I grew up hearing this will cause this and what not. But in fact, the two variables have either extremely minor or no relationship at all. “If you don’t finish all your rice off your bowl, you will marry someone one who is ugly and face filled with freckles and pimples” is something my parents would say to me when I was young. As a young girl, I had no idea so I did what I was told. I will never leave one peck of rice on my bowl. No matter how full I was, I stuffed my face with the rice. But growing older, I realize that not finishing one’s rice has nothing to do with one’s marriage.

 

Not only that, I have always been associated with the number eight. Why you might ask? Of course, it has to do with Chinese people’s superstitions. It is very popular among Chinese people to have the number eight in everything like phone numbers, house numbers, car plates and more. Eight is believed to be a lucky number since the pronunciation of eight in Chinese sounds like prosperity. This is why many Chinese people are willing to spend money to change their digits and other stuff since it is lucky. For example, people who gamble by playing the lottery would try to buy numbers dealing with the number eight. When they do win, they believe it is because of the number eight. But, when they lose with the presence of the number eight, they don’t even account it and continue believing that the number eight is lucky.

 

These superstitions in my life are examples that show illusory correlation. We humans try to find a relationship to prove our own understandings. Just like in Professor Wede’s class, the example of how the increase of ice cream sales correlate to the increase of murders. Two completely unrelated things are combined to form a theory. As he said, Correlation has nothing to do with causation. The increase of both ice cream sales and murders are only a pattern we perceived in our environment. We just make up our own relationships through our minds which in psychology is called illusory correlation.