On NPR this morning, I heard about a concept called "psychological contagion," which I find rather fascinating. What that is, basically, is our way of thinking that things which have come into contact with each other become connected; in fact, even ineluctably linked.
An example they used was the way you might feel about your grandmother's ring and an exact copy of it. Most people would like grandmother's ring better simply because she had actually worn it. That explains why the round blue glass dish I bought at an antique store, which is exactly the same as one my mother used to have, doesn't mean as much to me as the square blue glass dish of hers that I still have.
The story in which they brought this concept up was actually about people's aversion to drinking water that has been recycled from sewage. People cannot separate the two ideas, even though, as one researcher pointed out, all water has been pooped in by something or somebody at one time or another.
But I understand it. There were times when I'd be standing at the drinking fountain at work filling my water bottle, and I would hear a toilet flush in one of the nearby restrooms. No matter how the logical and intellectual side of my brain told me to ignore it, somewhere down deep there was a squeamish little shiver.
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