This is a response to a response about how smells are affective to people based on their being raised in different surroundings. Question: Do you think we would react differently to certain smells, if we werent raised to like or dislike them?
First, I personally think that your surroundings actually do not affect how you interpret a smell. To me it is more about the situation to which a smell has come into your life that determines how you are going to like or dislike that smell. For example, if you are attracted to someone and they are wearing a noticeable scent, then you are going to remember that smell very vividly as a good smell. Where alternatively if you disliked someone who wore a specific scent, then came across someone else who wore the same scent, it would have a negative effect towards you.
Secondly, I think that scent is sometimes based on what the body interprets as healthy or harmful to the body. As an example here, no one tells you that the smell of diarrhea is bad, but when you smell it you will know... I think that the reason is that your brain interprets that smell as something that is harmful to the body. Thus the nose explains that danger to the brain by making it smell bad.
Do you agree?
Saturday, February 13, 2010
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My response:
ReplyDelete"This is (are you ready?) a response to a response to a response. Yikes. The Question: Do you think we would react differently to certain smells, if we weren't raised to like or dislike them?
Well, I think what smells good or not does depend on how you were raised, in many situations. Sense of smell can remind us of where we were raised, which depending on the person, may be good or bad. As for how the same people would react to one smell: Take the example of smoking. I was raised in a non-smoking household and I cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke. My friend Missy, on the other hand, has a mother and older sister who both smoke. She barely notices the smell in her house, and doesn't seem to mind it as much as I do. She is used to it by now, whereas I was raised without it and taught that it was bad for me.
However, if I was not raised to dislike cigarette smoke, maybe I would not feel this way. People have been smoking for years, so it's not like humans are naturally set against it. In fact, I love the smell of woodsmoke (different than cigarette smoke of course, but still smoke.) I also believe that the other senses have an impact on whether or not a smell is good or bad to us. Example: I do not like the taste or texture of Deviled Eggs, and I think they smell really bad. Even the egg in potato and egg salad smells bad to me, and it's masked with other things. And today, as another example, I had a bite of some grilled chicken that tasted repulsive. For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, the smell of chicken was making me sick, and I usually love chicken. The senses all affect each other.
If one of our senses stopped working, how would the others be affected?"