Uncontrollable yet predictable, obvious yet inexplicable, blushing can be torture when we’re feeling embarrassed, ashamed, or just plain self-conscious. Why do we blush?
A new study suggests that a trigger for blushing is that heightened self-awareness, the feeling of being seen or exposed, rather than a cognitive evaluation of what others think of us.
The study was able to be done with the help of a group of 40 teenagers and 20-year-olds who were made to watch recordings of themselves singing karaoke while sitting in an MRI machine. However, having more evidence about the connection between blushing and self-awareness doesn’t necessarily mean we can stop the phenomenon.
In 1872, Charles Darwin described blushing as “the most peculiar and human of all expressions”. This is exacerbated when someone points out that you blushed, and being accused of it can make you blush even more, whether you’re guilty or not.
Researchers are trying to find out why we blush
The explanations for the physiological response are quite simple; a rush of blood to the face reddens the cheeks and sometimes the ears, neck, upper chest and forehead, explains Science Alert.
But why do we blush? This is a question that has remained unanswered for years. Is it shame or embarrassment from a clumsiness or a well-deserved compliment, or a sense of exposure to everyone around you?
Do people blush because they are suddenly concerned about what others think of them and feel judged? Or is it an involuntary emotional response that occurs before we have time to think?
And 2004 study found that the blush could be more intense on one side of the face compared to the other if one looked at the person from one side while they were singing. But many of these past studies, like this most recent one, are so small that no strong conclusions can be drawn.
“While fear-induced pallor is explicable in terms of a redirection of blood flow from the skin to skeletal muscles, it is less obvious why embarrassment in certain social situations should be accompanied by increased blood flow to the facial region ,” psychologist Ray Crozier wrote in 2010 pentru British Psychological Society.
What information do brain scans provide?
In this new study, Milica Nikolic, a psychology researcher at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and her colleagues tried to answer some of these questions about blushing using brain scans of karaoke singers, showing them recordings of themselves or with other people singing.
Surprisingly, only a few studies have mapped brain activity patterns in people made to feel embarrassed or self-conscious, and while they have observed physiological signs of heightened arousal, none have measured specific indicators of blushing.
Nikolic and her colleagues found that female volunteers’ cheeks got hotter while watching them sing compared to watching other people, which isn’t all that surprising.
fMRI scans of the brain were more revealing. They showed that blushing activated areas of the brain involved in emotional arousal and attention, while regions involved in mentalizing, meaning imagining or thinking about one’s own behavior or someone else’s behavior, thoughts, or intentions, were “notably absent.”
“These findings contribute to ongoing theoretical discussions regarding the nature of blushing and provide support for the idea that higher-order social-cognitive processes are not necessary for blushing to occur,” conclude Nikolic and her colleagues.
However, the team says their results should be “interpreted with caution” because patterns of brain activity associated with mental processes “as complex and pervasive as arousal, attention, and mentalization are not completely distinct.”
It remains to be seen whether these results can be replicated in a larger and more diverse group of people, not just university students. The so-called reproductive crisis has plagued psychology research for decades, partly reflecting the types of people recruited as volunteers for these studies.
The study has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
We recommend you also read:
First: A cancer patient’s voice was restored by a larynx transplant
A new study shows that narcissism declines with age
High ceilings have a surprising effect on exam-taking students
The active ingredient in Ozempic, linked to a condition that causes blindness
Source: www.descopera.ro
