The embarrassment column Leads the "chronic shy" to ask: Why do you blush? And why inside? and how does it work?
The last part of the question has a clear answer, the blush is the expansion of the blood capillaries under the skin of the face and neck. These parts of the body are rich in blood capillaries close to the surface, in addition the capillaries in the facial skin are wider so that the increased blood flow causes a noticeable change in tone. Everything else, shyly, is a mystery. The blood flow to the skin is an action that usually aims to help emit unnecessary heat to the environment and the mechanism is activated from the hypothalamus, that part of the brain responsible, among other things, for regulating body temperature. It is not clear why this system is activated in situations that have nothing to do with the heat balance. The nerve that causes the blushing belongs to the sympathetic branch of the nervous system, it is the one that triggers action and is activated in emergency situations, except that a true emergency situation, such that the dominant emotions are fear or anger, is actually accompanied by pallor. The body directs the blood supply to the muscles that will have to fight or escape at the expense of the skin. The blush is a completely involuntary reaction: an actor can convincingly portray shame, embarrassment, or guilt through body gestures and facial expressions but not through blushing.
An even bigger puzzle is why do you blush? It is hard to accept that such a strange and annoying phenomenon exists without a reason, but it is almost impossible to find an evolutionary advantage to blushing. Strangely enough, we stand out precisely in moments when all we want to do is disappear or the earth will swallow us up. And the tendency to blush is as high as the social anxiety. Cheeks also burn when this attention is positive: nothing causes a blush more than public praise. The face turns red when it seems to us that the wall of separation between the private self and the image we would like to project to the world is being undermined, that is when it becomes clear to a person that he has no control over his level of exposure to the environment. This happens when we are perceived as criminals of laws or conventions but also when a joke or comment brings to the public arena what a person prefers not to share with his friends. Oddly enough, what particularly triggers blushing is the real or imagined feeling that you are blushing.
The face is our showcase and those who seek to find a reason for blushing see it as a means of communication. Psychological studies have indeed shown that blushing encourages those around to accept with forbearance a deliberate or random violation of rules. But forgiveness has a price: in an experiment in which they played a game based on the "prisoner's dilemma", that is, when the total profit is high when both players cooperate but each can profit at the expense of the other party if they "cheat", it turned out that when the cheating party blushes, the cheated opponent reacts with relative forgiveness, but On the other hand, the trust he is willing to give to his opponent also decreases. Other studies have shown that blushing improves the way in which a person is judged both when it comes to intentional crime ("queue theft" in line at the supermarket checkout, for example) and when it comes to an embarrassing "accident" (a coffee cup spilled on a neighbor's pants and onto a bench) but when the embarrassing case falls into the gray area of blushing is seen as an admission of guilt and damages the reputation of the blusher. What could have been considered a mistake in good faith will be seen due to the blush as a deliberate and more "serious" act.
But it turns out that what is the fear of blushing is more harmful to our social status than the blush itself. The anxiety of blushing (Erythrophobia) is a common condition in which a person believes that he blushes regardless of the actual shade of the skin and is convinced that this blushing makes others look down on him or suspect him. These beliefs cause real damage to social conduct. In an experiment in which people were asked to have a 5-minute conversation with a stranger, it turned out that the person who was reported to be blushing (regardless of any actual blushing) expected a particularly low evaluation and was indeed evaluated as a less interesting interlocutor. In those suffering from blushing anxiety, a 0.2 degree increase in skin temperature and a noticeable change in tone was measured as soon as someone made them believe they were blushing. There are those who go so far as to undergo surgery with a lot of side effects to cut off the nerve that causes blushing just to get rid of this paralyzing fear.
But what really complicates the idea that blushing is a communication device gifted to us by evolution is the simple fact that visible blushing is a relatively new and non-universal phenomenon. Dilation of blood capillaries causes a color change only in light skinned people. Our ancestors who lived in the plains of East Africa were brown and therefore were not bothered by blushing. Only in the descendants of those who migrated north about 50,000 years ago to cloudy and low-radiation areas and were therefore exposed to the danger of vitamin D deficiency, the concentration of melanin in the skin decreased until the blood capillaries could dye it pink or red. The blood capillaries dilate in embarrassing situations in light-skinned and dark-skinned people equally, although the anxiety of blushing is great and rightly so in the light-skinned. Mark Twain stated that "man is the only animal that blushes or should blush" but even if it is appropriate for us to blush sometimes we should not take blushing too seriously.
Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? sent to ysorek@gmail.com
