Taste is a Problem.

[peter]

Not referring to the physiology of how I actually taste food here, or indeed good or bad taste in terms of the aesthetic - but why it is that it differs between us so greatly - and across such a broad swathe of our daily experience - without any easily identifiable explanation for this.

Start with the obvious; why do I hate custard but you love it? But we both love say peanut butter or ginger cookies?

Or why do I dislike the music of Bruce Springsteen, but you could tap your foot to it all day?

There seems to be no discernible cause as to so many of our likes and dislikes (except in the obvious cases where we were force fed lumps of cold gruel by our wicked aunt in our childhood and the aversion has stayed with us) and the reason they differ so much between us, that it can but present a perplexing problem.

What about films; why did I dislike the recent release of A Star Is Born - but StevieG thought it was great? I can pinpoint the reasons why I personally dislike a thing, say the slippery quality of tripe, but why should I dislike that, yet another person not. Are all of these things where our personal taste kicks in related deep within our subconscious - art and food and films.....music and clothes and the books we like. Are me and StevieG separated by type into two different groups of likes and dislikes that other people conform to as well. (ie Does the set of my likes and dislikes from a broad pattern shared by multiple other people, but not StevieG, who falls into a different subgroup - or is the set of my likes and dislikes peculiar, like a fingerprint, only to me, with each of us being pretty much equally different. And what is the underlying psychology behind all of this. Is it understood or even studied; is it simply too sprawling a subject to lend itself to analysis? Does my peculiar taste pattern have common roots in that say my liking of particular films is related to my liking of particular works of art or books (and does this run into food as well?).

So many questions with so few answers. As I say; taste is a problem!

[Skyweir]

Is it though?

Isnt it simply personality? Individuality?

But I guess if we look at taste in childhood .. as in literal taste. Most kids dont like strong flavours .. as their palates refine over time, and depending on what foods etc theyre introduced to.

Could it be as varied as that ...that it depends on how we are nurtured .. which shapes what we think and how we respond to different stimuli?

mmm... interesting

[peter]

But why do I like Paddington films and you like James Bond, I like Dali and you like Durer Sky? There has to be something that makes this so; does anyone have an inkling of an idea as to what lies behind the myriad aesthetic preferences we exhibit, what drives these likings in one direction and not another. Where in us is the decision made - certainly not by choice; you can no more choose the songs you like than you can your height or the colour of your skin. It's one of the things about us that are beyond our control. Has it a genetic basis? Is it nature and nurture based? Your suggestion that it might be 'top down' (ie personality dictated) is feasible - but I think unlikely to be the whole story.

[Cail]

I think you're spending too much time on it. Art resonates because it makes us feel something. People feel things differently because people's experiences are markedly different, even if multiple people are present for the same things.

I remember plain as day a date I went on in college. I took a girl to go see The Untouchables at the campus theater. We were the same age, grew up within 40 miles of each other, and had similar family backgrounds. She was horrified with the violence in the movie, while I thought it was fantastic. Our responses to the same stimulus was about as far apart as possible.

It's art. There's no objective truth of it. The Room is a poorly-made, poorly written film. And people love it. Are they wrong? Nope.

[Skyweir]

mmm... as one of those people who found The Room hilarious.. because what else do you do with a film, acting, plot everything that is sooo bad? And Disaster Artist awesome .. I tend to agree.

It's likely as mysterious as individuality. Which word Ive always found intriguing as it contains the term ... duality.

It is an interesting phenomenon Pete.. I looked into different tastes ie foods and found this is anatomically determined by the number of taste buds youre born with .. so genetic. Who knew that the foods we are more inclined to like in life is to some degree predetermined by our genes?

https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/10/ ... different/

People's tastes also are different because of the sensory capacities for the different tastes. "The sensory capacities of your taste buds are dictated by the structure of the receptors on your taste cells, and on their capacity to excite the process of transmitting the taste message," (TasteScience). The receptors catch the molecules that touch the front of the taste cells. After, they direct a message in the cell to the nerve endings around the cells. The different structure that everyone has come from their genes.

Another factor at play is our trigeminal sensitivity. Which I found particularly interesting as I get trigeminal neuralgia which is an over stimulated nerve in your head and face.

Another factor that plays into what you taste is trigeminal sensitivity. This means the different reactions to cold and hot. Foods of course trigger the tastes, but they also trigger the trigeminal sensitivity on the temperature. For example, some people like the cooler taste of mint, and some like the warmer taste that cinnamon has.

But read the article as there is a body of research referred to as .... taste science.

The Smithsonian article is interesting as it looks at a few different scientific approaches from neuropsychological to behavioural psychology
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... -73470150/

We call our liking for all kinds of things-music, fashion, art-our taste. And in fact the physiological processes associated with liking seem to be broadly similar, no matter if we are talking about food or music

Or take the "mere exposure" effect, first described by the psychologist Robert Zajonc: "Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it." In other words, the more times you try something, the more you will generally like it. The effect has been shown in everything from food (with young children, some researchers have found that around nine exposures are needed before liking sets in) to Pakistani music to unfamiliar languages to Impressionist paintings. As the old saying goes, we don't always know what we like, but we're pretty sure we don't like what we don't know.

But there's a twist to mere exposure. Whereas we learn to like more complex melodies upon repeated exposures, we tend to tire of (and like less) simpler ones.

This article focusses on different musical tastes and persuasions.
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.for ... music/amp/

And in this article .. exposure is also flagged as having a role in taste

At least some of our music preference is cultural.

Certain combinations of sounds may be more common in particular geographic regions. Lifelong familiarity with these patterns would be a reason to prefer them.

None of them lead us to an absolute authoritative cause, but its a start and gives us a sense of the range of variables at play.

...

[peter]

Yes - interesting stuff Sky. Cail points out how people with even very similar upbringings (ie the nurture part of the nature-nurture pairing) can exhibit widely different tastes; I'm guessing that identical twin studies would be the best way to study this in greater depth - though who can actually say how the myriad different micro-events that make up daily experience in toto are actually percieved by two distinct individuals, be they even as closely related as identical twins.

As with many things concerned with the way the brain works, perhaps it would be by studying the brain function of those unfortunate people who have lost the ability to form preferences - or indeed those who have no preference at all to begin with - that would yeild the most significant information. Knowledge of how the brain/mind works here might even one day be relevant in the mimicking of the faculty in artificial intelligence.

[Ur Dead]

Tastes.. a choice of preferences that an individual desires to associate with.
They can coincide with other's preferences or have a similar point of choice
but may be or not exactly alike.

eg. your tastes in women is different than mine. We coincide that we like women, but the shape, age, build and personality differs greatly.
eg..eg.. You like the young, sexy, gold digging airheads where for me, it is,
eight to eighty, blind, cripple or crazy.

See the differences and similar tastes...

[Skyweir]

[peter]

Mmm...?

I've just realised - I don't so much fancy women so much as all the people I've ever fancied to date have been women.

One never knows where one's tastes may run to in the future......



(Perhaps I shouldn't have winked there; could be taken the wrong way. )

[Skyweir]

All good Pete .. pretty sure Ur Dead was joshing _

At least I sincerely hope so ..

8 to 80