Tweet
Can a mere sneeze make you closed-minded and unsociable? Yes, and here?s why:
Your body?s immune system can help eliminate pathogens once they've entered your body. But cell-to-cell combat with bacteria and viruses drains the body?s resources, and doesn?t always result in a win for the good guys (sometimes disease kills people, despite their immune system?s best efforts). It would be much more effective to simply avoid disease in the first place.
Indeed, following the outbreaks of Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and SARS, people responded not only by washing their hands more frequently, but by staying out of restaurants, parks, and other places that might bring them into contact with others. My family used to frequent a nearby kid-friendly buffet restaurant every week, for example, but we?ve shied away for months now, after an influenza scare made us think of all the other customers as potential disease vectors for my young son and grandchildren.
In a paper published in Psychological Science in March, Chad Mortensen and his colleagues reported on two experiments exploring how thoughts of disease can trigger social avoidance at multiple levels -- in ways that can ultimately aid the immune system (by leading us to avoid contact with others). The research demonstrated that merely thinking of diseases led people to (a) think of themselves as less sociable and (b) make more rapid avoidant movements.
Your body?s immune system can help eliminate pathogens once they've entered your body. But cell-to-cell combat with bacteria and viruses drains the body?s resources, and doesn?t always result in a win for the good guys (sometimes disease kills people, despite their immune system?s best efforts). It would be much more effective to simply avoid disease in the first place.
Indeed, following the outbreaks of Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and SARS, people responded not only by washing their hands more frequently, but by staying out of restaurants, parks, and other places that might bring them into contact with others. My family used to frequent a nearby kid-friendly buffet restaurant every week, for example, but we?ve shied away for months now, after an influenza scare made us think of all the other customers as potential disease vectors for my young son and grandchildren.
In a paper published in Psychological Science in March, Chad Mortensen and his colleagues reported on two experiments exploring how thoughts of disease can trigger social avoidance at multiple levels -- in ways that can ultimately aid the immune system (by leading us to avoid contact with others). The research demonstrated that merely thinking of diseases led people to (a) think of themselves as less sociable and (b) make more rapid avoidant movements.
