A Term for "Strong Negative Emotional Imprinting"?

I am wondering if there is a term for this phenomenon, or concepts related to it.

Suppose a person really likes, say, going to amusement parks. They travel around a lot, going to one every week. It’s their hobby and important to them.

They go on a date with someone they really like, and they take him to an amusement park, and the partner at some point during that date, indicates he thinks amusement parks are a little silly.

The person is crushed by this, and finds on all future instances that they can never enjoy going to amusement parks again. Going to one makes them sad and anxious. And this effect seems permanent. They feel that amusement parks are ruined forever, like they’ve been taken away.

Is there a term for this? I’d like to look up information on this kind of thing if it exists.

Any other informative comments are appreciated as well!

I would be curious about this also, I think it is largely underestimated as to the overall impact this has on individuals and possibly even society.

Not meant as snark:

How important could this hobby be if one comment by someone trashes the whole experience for them? Sounds like crippling esteem issues.

So my question stems from a real case (not me) and I would say this phenomenon doesn’t have implications for the importance of the activity, but may have relations to esteem issues. I am not sure.

Not your scenario, but I’ve always called strong negative emotional imprinting based on repeated bad incidents a Pavlovian reaction.

I was afraid of the dentist for years because I never lost a tooth naturally and thus, for several years when I was a kid, I had to have teeth pulled every time I went to the dentist. For years after, I got nervous not only when I was on the street where the dentist’s office was, but when I saw the bus that I rode only to go to the dentist. :eek: I’ve gotten better. :slight_smile:

Is one incident enough to call it Pavlovian if that incident is strong/bad enough?

It is some huge insecurity problem if it happens as said in the OP. Plenty of people get their bubble burst when they’ve never considered how others might view their hobby, or if they just never reflect on themselves. It might ruin their enjoyment in the future but if it produces severe sadness and anxiety it’s a much deeper problem.

“Disappointment.”

Mr.Wrekker loves hunting and fishing. Me not so much. I don’t bitch about it or go hunting with him, either. He doesn’t do my hobbies or activities. I wouldn’t expect him to. We have things we do toghether, also. If your intended insists that you have to like their preferred hobby that should set off alarms. You don’t have to like everything, it makes for a more diversified dinner conversation. No disappointment necessary.

I believe “psychological trauma” should cover it, though the hypothetical case would be a very mild one (or involve a hypersensitive subject).

The colloquial phrases “bad memories” or “bad experiences” would apply if they lost interest due to the painful nature of the experience. If it’s more about the other person’s opinion, it’d be called “peer pressure” or something like that.

Classical conditioning.

From the thread title I was going to say “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” but your example indicates something less survival-related. PTSD is normally associated with physically threatening or scary experiences. Fight or flight type of stuff. With PTSD we’re talking fear, a function of your back brain, which has various parts that do different things. As I understand it, these responses happen in two places, the amygdala (fear) and the hippocampus (memory formation). PTSD is more about a trigger, so in this example it might apply if any images, sounds, or other sensory or symbolic reminders of an amusement park caused renewed feelings of fear, which in turn motivated aversive behavior (avoidance). Fear or anxiety also has physiological responses, like knots in the stomach and rapid heartbeat, etc. Memories formed under duress, or emotional excitation, are much stronger, deeper, and more likely to re-program unconscious behaviors than those formed in calm situations.

The above musing is maybe off topic from the question… however, the only way I’d feel crushed by a hot date trashing my taste in entertainment would ultimately be fear-based. Fear or abandonment, really. And both those responses tie into negative emotions related to feelings of being humiliated or abandoned. Both these feelings are social-related, not directly related to survival. I could see it happening if I really, REALLY liked the person, and was already feeling fluttered (a form of fear, excitement, anxiety, uncertainty) and then they did that. In the social realm, humiliation or loss of status = death, because as a social animal if you are ostracized from your band, shunned from the herd, cast out into the wilderness, your chances of survival are slim.

Another example could be an audition where you really wanted that part, had tons of stage fright, and the audition team booed you, mocked you, humiliated you in front of a large crowd of people. Awful. It takes a lot of determination to keep going back and auditioning for other parts after that. But that’s what you have to do. For the amusement parks, same thing. You have to determine that one jerky remark is not going to take your fun away and then go back with a trusted friend, have a great time, and over-write that bad memory with a better one that you make yourself.

Sorry if this is a tangent, or off topic, or wasn’t your question.

A change in behavior from one incident is often called the Garcia effect or*Garcia learning*. While most people relate it to things like the disinclination to eat a food that once gave you food poisoning, it can also be used to described a sudden aversion to things previously enjoyed as described in the OP.

Oh, hello and welcome to the Dope.

Based on your little behavioral science spiel here, I think you and I are going to get along just fine.

“Aversion Therapy” is a technique said to train something like this into people.
It was/is used when people like something that society says they shouldn’t like.

It consists of showing a person an image of the thing they like and simultaneously inflicting pain on them (usually electrical shock or nausea), so that the person will begin to associate that stimuli with pain. Formerly used to ‘treat’ homosexuality; now sometimes used on pedophiles.

There are questions about both the morality and the effectiveness of this procedure.

That seems to be something like what the OP is asking about, possibly.