How to Use aversive in a Sentence

aversive

adjective
  • The first one is associated with a state of mind that is aversive.
    John Williams, New York Times, 16 July 2017
  • This part of the brain plays an important role in avoiding aversive outcomes.
    Allison Futterman, Discover Magazine, 9 Nov. 2022
  • The researchers then measured the rats’ aversive responses such as mouth movements, sticking out the tongue or licking paws.
    Chris Gorski, Discover Magazine, 28 Jan. 2023
  • Through past experiences with people, dogs could come to view the angry expression as aversive.
    Julie Hecht, Scientific American, 1 May 2017
  • This would be predicted if the dogs recognized an angry face as an aversive stimulus.
    Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 17 Feb. 2015
  • A day later, a rat injected with harmless saline remembers the aversive shock, steering clear of the triangular zone.
    Gary Stix, Scientific American, 12 May 2012
  • Like thirst, hunger or pain, loneliness is an aversive state that animals seek to resolve, improving their long-term survival.
    Quanta Magazine, 10 May 2016
  • Change tends to cause anxiety for people, and anxiety is an aversive reaction to some sort of stimulus.
    The Politics Of Everything, The New Republic, 1 Feb. 2023
  • Misophonia is an aversive reaction to specific sounds, often in the form of annoyance that turns quickly to anger.
    Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 18 Sep. 2019
  • Earlier studies had shown that specific nerve pathways leading to a structure known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA) were important for the aversive nature of the foot shock.
    Robert Martone, Scientific American, 27 Aug. 2019
  • With some 60 likenesses by a notoriously testy, people-aversive artist-rebel, this is the largest gathering of its kind in a century.
    New York Times, 5 July 2018
  • But technology has overcome the neutrino’s aversive nature and opened up a new window onto the universe.
    Alan Hirshfeld, WSJ, 15 Dec. 2017
  • One study found that dogs trained with aversive methods looked at their owners less frequently than dogs trained with positive reinforcement.
    Linda Lombardi, chicagotribune.com, 1 Oct. 2019
  • When most people look at pictures designed to elicit an aversive reaction, such as of a cockroach, the brain’s insula lights up with activity.
    Helen Thomson, WSJ, 29 June 2018
  • When a panel of people smelled the collection T-shirts, panelists found the body odor of people whose immune systems had been activated by the endotoxin to be more aversive than normal body odor.
    Sarah Everts, Time, 21 July 2021
  • Activating cells in the mice’s amygdalae was enough to make neutral-tasting water either appealing or aversive.
    Simon Makin, Scientific American, 30 May 2018
  • Because the brain finds uncertainty aversive, the emotional realm will respond to unpredictability with a signal.
    WIRED, 11 Sep. 2022
  • The prefrontal cortex is involved in decision making; the dorsal periaqueductal gray area processes painful and aversive events.
    Cody A. Siciliano, The Conversation, 21 Nov. 2019
  • The take-home message is that if someone smells aversive, others may avoid being in close proximity, which is a pretty reasonable strategy for avoiding potential infections.
    Sarah Everts, Time, 21 July 2021
  • The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior.
    Ncbi Rofl, Discover Magazine, 13 Oct. 2011
  • Difficult tasks, and particularly tasks involving heavy mental investment, come with an aversive experience of mental effort.
    David Badre, Scientific American, 24 Jan. 2021
  • Without QoE visibility, network operators can’t detect problems and take aversive action before disgruntled customers bombard their customer service lines (or simply leave for a competitor).
    Yaakov Stein, Forbes, 15 July 2022
  • Gamma-undecalactone generally smells fatty and aversive.
    Scott Sayare, Harper's Magazine, 23 Nov. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'aversive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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