Why do we blush? Is it a reaction to being embarrassed, self-conscious, mortified, or just happy? For years, scientists have tried to figure out why someone blushes. Sure, we know that blushing happens randomly and that, for many, blushing is often seen as a self-conscious reaction. But, for the first time, scientists may have finally figured out why our cheeks turn so red.
To figure out exactly what causes the redness in our cheeks to appear, scientists recorded 40 teenagers and 20-year-olds singing karaoke and then strapped them into an MRI machine to watch their karaoke back. The goal was to capture when the participants blushed and then figure out how their brains reacted to the skin-deep reaction.
In this new study, the researchers found that blushing appears to be directly related to the emotional arousal and attention parts of our brain. Surprisingly, the reason why we blush doesn’t appear to be tied in any way to the part of our brain involved with mentalizing—imaging or thinking about your own or someone else’s thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.
So, it doesn’t seem that blushing is something we do because we are embarrassed or self conscious. Of course, as with anything that has to do with our brains, reading the signals sent by our brains is a very complex matter. The researchers found that the female participants in the group were more prone to blushing than the male participants, which raised some additional questions.
Ultimately, the team says that the results and their findings should all be interpreted carefully. They’d also like to capture more results with a more diverse group to see how things change in other participants within different age ranges. Of course, whether or not these exact results will be replicated in a larger, more diverse group is another question altogether.
But perhaps we are one step closer to solidifying a proper explanation as to why humans blush.
