A Post of Essay-like Proportion

So, there is a reason this post is so long. I was tired when I wrote it. And that means I was just thinking and typing whatever the hell I thought. And I think a lot. So sorry about the length. I'll try to be more concise later.

So, before you read this, it would probably be beneficial to know that I'm studying psych (well neuroscience) at university, and I tend to think about stuff kind of like this rather often.

But, I was thinking about whether there are patterns in people's preferences, and if these patterns are caused by a person's environment or by some sort of biological setting in your brain. For example, I am a big fan of the science fiction genre, and I'm also a big fan of movies and cinematography. If you think about it, these seem like interests that go together. And there are a lot of people with these same interests, of science fiction and movies. But is this liking of different things a psychological thing or a social thing? Because, if you think about it, there doesn't have to be something in common between the genre of science fiction and movie making. But there often is. And so, I get to thinking about why these interests seem to make so much sense in being related.

(Disclaimer: I apologize to anyone who has some actual information on any of the stuff I'm talking about here, because I'm just kind of musing and writing down things that come to me and seem to make sense.)

Is this related liking a social thing? Is is based on what your friends and people you know like? That you like thing A and you see someone who likes both thing A and thing B, and you think “Oh, thing B looks interesting” and you end up sharing interests that way (or something like that). I'm pretty sure that isn't the case, based on my experience. Most of my friends aren't fans of both sci fi and movies. Actually, most of my friends aren't as big fans of either as I am. Sure, there are people that I know that share these interests, but it seems like I would be influenced most by my friends. But now that I think about it, I have similar interests to people in my family, which either supports this social hypothesis (because you tend to be around your family more than your friends) or it could imply that what you like is influenced by genetics.

But there's another kind of social hypothesis for the kind of shared liking, and it's based on cultural stereotypes. For example, when you think of someone like me, who likes sci fi and movies, you most likely envision some sort of nerd who loves Star Wars etc. And this is why we think of these interests as being related, because they so often are in these well known stereotypes. But this kind of knowledge requires mass media (movies, television, internet) for those types of stereotypes to become so well known. But the “well-knownness” of these stereotypes still doesn't explain why so many people share these interests.

Which is why I feel like there might be some sort of biological reason that someone who like sci fi might also like film. This first raises the question of “What, biologically, makes you like something in the first place?” I really wish I knew the answer to this question, because that would be cool. I don't even know if the answer to that question is known by anyone, and I'm kind of too tired right now to look it up, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

It would be REALLY COOL if, if there is a physical connection between liking one thing and liking another thing, you could try to kind of predict what people would like based on what else they like. And if you could see this kind of physical tendency towards liking something in the brain of a child, you could try to use that information to make their lives more enjoyable by introducing them to things that they have a high likelihood of liking. But now I'm kind of getting into sci-fi crazy futuristic possibilities stuff, so I'm gonna stop.

So, I hope you weren't too bored or overwhelmed by this, because I had fun writing it (I love just thinking about stuff like this).