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How Your Brain Prevents You From Getting Sick
Experts say human beings have an emotionally driven defense shield called the ‘behavioral immune system’
Have you recently dodged a person sneezing at the store by instinct or automatically taken a few steps back when you pass someone without a mask on? These behaviors could be part of an adaptive response evolutionary psychologists call the “behavioral immune system.”
Your behavioral immune system causes you to adopt a cognitive bias against things that could hurt you and then motivates protective behaviors. Think of it as your first line of defense — your brain’s way of trying to prevent your physiological immune system from ever having to kick into gear. The behavioral immune system is basically your nervous system’s goal to avoid potentially debilitating side effects of the physiological immune response, like a fever or fatigue, and all the health risks that could come with being infected by a parasite.
“We all have behavioral repertoires we do to avoid being in contact with pathogens or people who could be sick.”
Nate Pipitone, PhD, an evolutionary psychologist who teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University, says the behavioral immune system is…
