For example, ladybugs and cockroaches are both beetle-like in appearance but far fewer people are afraid of ladybugs, house centipedes and caterpillars are often the same size but people are more creeped out by the centipedes, and butterflies and moths are super similar but people are grossed out by moths and find butterflies pretty. Is this just socialization or are there common features we generally don’t like?
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I think it’s social conditioning. I don’t have a ELI5 scientific answer for you but I am terrified of ladybugs (a ladybug infestation is horrific sight… also they stink) and I find moths and butterflies equally creepy, even though butterflies are objectively pretty.
Association is powerful too, lady bugs live in gardens, pleasant spaces. Roaches live in ghettos, dark, gross places, they infest slums. Caterpillars live outside and are bright colours, fun colours, centipedes creep in the same dark spaces as roaches, ugly brown.
Also, probably, evolutionarily we draw those associations from ancestral memory. Roaches are dirty, they spread disease, we know disease bad, we don’t like disease so we don’t like roaches.
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