Aversion is associated with disgust or displeasure.
Aversion is the displeasure , disgust or rejection that is felt towards something or someone. The concept comes from the Latin word aversio.
For example: “I have an aversion to spiders: just thinking about them makes my skin crawl,” “The government has an aversion to independent journalists,” “Manuel never wants to formalize his romantic ties because he suffers from an aversion to commitment.”
What is aversion
Aversion can be understood as a resistance or an objection . A person may say that they experience an aversion to swearing . This means that when he hears a bad word (or swear word ) or when he notices impolite behavior, he gets in a bad mood.
The first impulse that arises when faced with the stimulus that causes us aversion is to get away from it, whether it is a thing, a situation or a person. Depending on the case, violent attitudes may appear against them, and this can have consequences of varying severity, especially if the damage is received by a living being.
A food can also cause aversion. As expressed in the previous paragraph, the rejection that characterizes this sensation leads us to distance ourselves from the negative stimulus, and in a case of this type the most natural solution is to expel the food from the body.
Those who have an aversion to flights , for their part, try not to travel by plane or helicopter because of the unpleasant sensations they suffer in the air. The act of flying causes fear , uncertainty and anxiety , and even causes physical discomfort. That is why the subject with an aversion to flights prefers to travel by land or water.
What generates aversion is rejected.
A primary emotion
In technical terms, we can say that aversion is a primary emotion , that is, one of the complex and automatic affective states that we cannot control and that help us adapt to the environment, since they favor our reaction mechanism to stimuli .
Other primary emotions are disgust, fear, love, sadness and anger. In this context, some believe that aversion is the foundation of certain feelings, such as hatred and apathy.
aversion therapy
Aversion therapy is known as psychological or psychiatric treatment that aims to overcome unwanted behavior by exposing the patient to the stimulus that triggers it and getting them to associate it with an unpleasant sensation .
Depending on the problem to be solved, aversion can be achieved in different ways; For example, to fight alcoholism, alcohol can be mixed with emetic substances (that cause vomiting).
The concept in economics
In the field of economics , the notion of risk aversion is used to refer to a type of behavior adopted by investors and consumers. The idea refers to the individual who chooses the offer that has a lower risk even when another offer with a higher risk could give him a more important return or benefit.
Risk aversion can be found beyond the economic level, since it is related to people's psychology . A risk-averse individual may choose to remain in a low-paying job with poor working conditions rather than quit to try to find a better job.
This concept can be understood through the expression "better bad known than good unknown" , which is used to describe the decision of the person who, out of fear of change, prefers to remain in their current situation, with the people around them, with her belongings and everything that characterizes her until now. While there is no guarantee that the unknown is better than the known, we are likely to improve if we keep moving.