Darwin's theory has been corrected
Scientists are forcing young volunteers to sing karaoke to find out what makes us blush. If scientists came up with an experiment that was almost guaranteed to cause embarrassment and red cheeks, filming teenagers singing «Let It Go» from Frozen and re-enacting their performance might do the trick.
So, thanks to researchers at the University of Amsterdam, who invited dozens of young volunteers into the laboratory before reporting what was required of them, writes The Guardian. In front of the camera, without the opportunity to take a photo or two, they were asked to play a track before they and other spectators watched the performance using a brain scanner.
Through such deliberate killing of flesh and measurements using temperature sensors attached to the participants' cheeks, scientists hoped to reveal signs of flushing in the brain — the neural activity underlying what Darwin called “the most human of all manifestations.”
Psychologists talk about two main theories when it comes to blushing. According to one theory proposed by Darwin, blush appears on the cheeks when we think about how we should appear to others. Another suggests that something simpler is at work: a more spontaneous response to feelings of insecurity.
“It’s just being in a social situation where you’re visible and the centre of attention, and you feel vulnerable and you’re being watched by others,” said Dr Milica Nikolic, a psychologist and the study’s first author. “Or is it more complex and we start to think about how we look and how we appear to other people?”
After announcing that young people could take part in the study, which involved a “social task” and watching videos in a brain scanner, the scientists interviewed more than 60 young people aged 16 to 20. All but two were men, leading to the decision to focus exclusively on young women, The Guardian reports.
During the first visit to the laboratory, each volunteer was asked to perform karaoke while being videotaped. The songs were released in limited quantities: «Let It go», «Hello» by Adele, «All I Want For Christmas Is You» by Mariah Carey and «All The Things She Said» by t.A.T.u — tracks considered difficult to sing and therefore , should have caused maximum embarrassment.
A week later, the volunteers returned to the laboratory. This time they watched their performance with other participants while lying on a brain scanner. They were told that others were watching them perform at the same time, a ploy designed to increase their embarrassment.
As expected, people blushed more often while watching themselves than when watching others. But analysis of brain scans has shown that the sudden flushing of the cheeks may not be caused in the way Darwin believed. The blushing was accompanied by increased activity in the cerebellum, which researchers associate with emotional arousal, and signs in the visual cortex of the brain, indicating that people are paying close attention to their work. The researchers found that in the scans there was nothing to indicate that people were thinking about how others might evaluate them.
“You can blush simply from being exposed,” says Milica Nikolic . “In this very short moment you may not think about what I look like and so on. I think it happens more automatically than theory suggests.”