I’ll never forget my most embarrassing moment. I tripped down a flight of stairs and landed, face first, directly in front of my middle school crush, only to realize that my pants had ripped in the happening. As I got up, my girl friend said, “oh my gosh, your face is so red!”, which then led to my face turning an ever deeper red from embarrassment.
The science behind blushing is actually quite simple to understand. Blushing most commonly occurs when one experiences emotions such as embarrassment, anger, or nervousness. After one of these emotions is triggered, your body relies on your sympathetic nervous system to either “fight” or “flight”. From there, according to Inscriptions Journal, “vasodilators are stimulated which causes the peripheral capillaries to expand”. This results in blood flow to the face and neck, hence why one is deemed as “turning red”.
We often fear that we will be judged poorely if we are seen blushing. In a study conducted by the University of Groningen, individuals with and without the fear of blushing were tested. Then, half of the participants were told that they were blushing during a conversation. Even though the participants were not blushing to begin with, many of them blushed just by someone telling them that they were. This same study also found that those who blushed, felt that they were being judged negatively.
However, we’ve got it all wrong. A Dutch psychologist, Corine Dijk, conducted a experimental study to test the way people react to those who blush. He showed photos to volunteers of people who were either blushing or not blushing and along with each picture, an embarrassing story was told about the person pictured to the volunteer. The volunteers then judged each person and checked off what qualities they would presume the person pictured to have. The blushers were always judged more favorably. The study also found that people are more willing to trust and forgive you if you are blushing. If you think about it, it would be easier to trust someone who obviously feels guilty after a wrongdoing.
So, I definitely am not thankful for my clumsy feet that failed me that day, but maybe I should be thankful for the fact that I blushed. Even though things didn’t work out with my crush, maybe he felt a little more favorable towards me after seeing my face turn so red. So, my new advice to everyone would be to blush away!
Kristen Robertson
Resources:
http://www.inscriptionsjournal.org/stop-youre-making-me-blush/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19358973
this is a great blog i love it!!! I feel like I used to blush more when I was in elementary school because I felt like everyone was judging me and making fun of me(agreeing with your comments in the blog). There are many reasons people blush, being so happy/excited, getting complemented and even being in love. So I think it has moved on past embarrassment and intimidating as people get older. While the study conducted provides good evidence about blushing, I think there are many other contributing factors that could be touched upon in the experiment. The room temperature could have an affect on the blushing (warm room causes face to flush) and also people’s skin could have a rosier tint than others, ultimately looking more “blush”. This article explains more on why we blush http://mentalfloss.com/article/51299/why-do-people-blush
I really enjoyed reading your post! Your embarrassing moment is quite hilarious. I blush so easily, and I have always been so embarrassed by it. One article I found explores blushing a bit more as a “communicative function.” Here is the link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reality-play/201208/in-defense-blushing
This is so relevant to me, I blush so easily and so often and I have always hated it. After reading this, I realized that maybe it isn’t so bad after all. I realized that I have always felt sympathetic towards people who were embarrassed or blushing because I think about if I was in their shoes, how I would want people to feel about me. I agree with Heather on this as well, that it’s definitely due to compassions!
Your article is cool, wrote about blushing for the last blog period you can read it here if you want. I think the reason that people tend not the judge others who blush harshly is due to compassion, we’ve all been there. I think its in our evolution not to be intimidated by a blushing person, which makes us more open to liking them. We often think to ourselves that blushing is a weakness so its understandable that people wouldn’t want to harshly judge a “weaker” person.