THAT'S MEN:Solving the mystery of why people blush, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
THE OTHER day I was talking to somebody about a behaviour which would be viewed with disapproval by that person and by many other people. This particular behaviour isn’t one of my vices, but the thought struck me that if it was, I would be blushing. Needless to say, my face was burning within seconds and stayed that way until we moved on to another topic.
No doubt some of my more psychoanalytically-minded readers would draw all sorts of inferences from this, which is why I’m not telling you what the behaviour is.
The incident underlines, though, the puzzle of blushing and why we do it. Of course, it’s normally associated with embarrassment, guilt and shame, and we’ve all experienced it in these contexts.
That doesn’t matter. What matters is that some people find their social lives constrained by their own fear of blushing in company. Some even go so far as to seek surgery to reduce or eliminate their blushing. This, I would suggest, is a greater problem for men than for women because women can hide their blushes behind make-up.
Nobody knows what’s going on when it comes to blushing. In experiments, people who are singing or reading out loud can be made to blush by staring at them.
One experiment found that having somebody stare at one side of a performer’s face brought on blushing on that side but not on the other.
People have been known to blush in a group when some offence such as stealing is being investigated even though they are innocent.
A sensitive topic of conversation can bring on blushing in a person who is not the centre of attention in the conversation.
An article by Prof Ray Crozier of Cardiff University in a recent issue of The Psychologist suggests that one function of blushing is to signal to the world that you are a decent chap and a normal member of whatever group you happen to be in.
The message goes something like this: Even though I may have done something you would not approve of, I am not a bad person; I am in fact a good and virtuous member of the group and if you want proof just look at how my own behaviour makes me blush.
I like this explanation, both because it makes sense and because it fits with my own jaundiced view of the deviousness of human nature. Moreover, experiments in social psychology have found that people who blush after making a faux pas are forgiven more readily than those who don’t.
But that, of course, is not the full explanation. Some people blush without obvious cause. And as Prof Crozier points out, many who say they have a serious problem with blushing turn out, on investigation, to blush no more and no less than average. So it is their own perception that they blush that limits their social lives rather than the actual blushing itself.
For conditions like this, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl recommended the use of “paradoxical intention”. This involves pretending to want to do the thing you are afraid of doing.
So when going into company, instead of, “What will I do if I blush?”, you would say something like: “When I go into this group I have every intention of blushing. In fact, I intend to blush so much I could get a job as a lighthouse. What’s more, if I spun around I could probably be mistaken for a flashing red light on a Garda car. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
Sound ridiculous? It ought to. Humour and exaggeration are used in paradoxical intention. Does it work? Yes, for a lot of people a lot of the time. Why? Probably because you stop fighting with yourself and this gradually allows you to get drawn into the social interaction with others.
You can read Ray Crozier’s article by typing his name into the search box at thepsychologist.org.uk
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail