Why do you like what you like?

Why do I take my coffee black? I ask myself this while sipping an americano.

And this thought pops up, we know what we like, but do we know why we like it?

Why do we have this taste? Why do we have these habits, and why are we so stuck to them? Some of us (yes, me too) won’t even try something different. We stick to what we know like it’s our personality, ingrained into us. And then there are people who try new things again and again.

And here I am, thinking again: why do you like the things you like? Why does one person need their coffee bitter while another can’t get it down without a couple spoons of sugar?

Is it the environment? The exposure effect? Or is it biology? Because people do have different levels of taste sensitivity.

Let’s start with biology. People really do taste things differently. Some of us are more sensitive to bitterness, which means the same coffee hits one person like a punch and another like nothing. There’s even research suggesting that people who are more sensitive to caffeine’s bitterness end up drinking more coffee, probably because the brain connects that taste with the lift that comes after. So maybe my black coffee was never just a choice.

But biology isn’t the whole story. There’s the exposure effect, which basically says we like what we’ve been around. The tea your parents had every morning. The first coffee you had on a bad day. Nobody sits you down and teaches you your taste. It just builds up quietly, one repetition at a time, before you’re even paying attention.

And then comes the part I think about the most. Once we like something, we stay there. Familiar feels safe, so we keep picking it. Do that long enough and the habit stops being a habit and starts feeling like who you are. “I’m a black coffee person.” “I don’t do sweet.” That’s not taste anymore, that’s identity.

Which makes me wonder about the people who keep trying new things. Are they just born less attached to what they know? Did something in their environment tell them it’s okay to get it wrong? I don’t know. But I know which kind of person I am when I’m standing at a café counter, and it’s not the second one.

Maybe the better question isn’t why I like what I like. Maybe it’s when I last gave myself the chance to like something else.