Social Construction

Today in class, we learned about the social construction of reality. We saw an example of this through the experiment Mr. Salituro had one of our classmates do. She had to fill a spoon with saliva and when he asked her to put it back in her mouth, everyone was disgusted by it and she refused. This lesson was really interesting to me because I've never really thought about how we become accustomed to think something like that is gross or how we adapt to think of something in a certain way. The only difference between the saliva is how we thought about it. The saliva was still the same on the spoon, but because we percieved the saliva as spit when it wasn't in her mouth, it was gross to us. It's like when one of my friends asks me to use my chapstick I usually always say no because I don't want their lips touching the same object that mine do. It's my perception of how their germs would be transferred on the chapstick and it grosses me out. But I know a lot of people that don't mind to share chapstick because they don't percieve the sharing the same way as I do. Another example is that I don't like to drink out of glasses in restaraunts without a straw. Some people may never think about the idea that hundreds of people have put their mouths on the side of the glass. Even though they get cleaned, the fact that I think about all the peoples germs that have touched the glass, it makes me grossed out and needy for a straw. It's crazy isn't it!?