﻿There are many circumstances which cause a person to blush.
We blush when we’re embarrassed...When you’ve just said “What about you?” to the waitress who
asked about your food...Or when an unwelcome stomach growl has the whole crowd looking at you.
We blush when we are Shy, like when you’re doing icebreakers for your new local ice hockey team.
We even blush when we are romantically roused, after a first kiss… Or any kiss.
Blushing does not discriminate, with even celebrities falling victim to it… What is
unique about the blush is that it is not just an emotional response, but an emotional display.
Every so often you may be able to hide how you feel, but it’s even harder to hide how you
look. In fact, people subconsciously judge you when you blush, and as it turns out,
blushing can be a tool to take advantage of, portraying sincerity and even honesty.
Blushing is the phenomenon of the reddening of the face,
most typically due to a social ‘transgression’ - which is when you say or do something that
doesn’t fit the generally agreed upon social plan, causing the individual to feel as if
they will be negatively judged by others. It’s like how a squid shoots out black ink to escape,
blushing lessens the chance of being perceived negatively by others as it’s linked to sincerity
and honesty, it’s a natural social defence mechanism. What is happening behind the skin
when we blush is a rapid vascular response, causing blood vessels to widen, distributing
more blood in specific areas. As you probably already figured out, some of the main areas with
more blood distribution when blushing are the cheeks, and occasionally, the forehead.
A university study in 2019 looked at the judgements of a range of participants
after watching and experiencing another person blush, looking at how blushing changes the
way someone views another’s sincerity, forgiveness, embarrassment and anger.
97 university students were shown pictures of different faces, either not blushing, seen here
as the ‘baseline’ image, or, a photo that had been artificially enhanced to make the person appear to
be red-faced and flushed. As the pictures were shown, participants were asked questions such as
“You catch these people telling a lie. Which face looks more embarrassed?” or “These people
apologize for cheating on a test. Whose apology is more sincere?”. As the experiment continued,
different faces were displayed to the participants of the test, displaying multiple emotions.
As the graph shows, As the subject’s face got redder, their embarrassment, apology sincerity,
and likeliness to forgive, as rated by the participants, went up, with the most extreme
difference in the amount of embarrassment. While the embarrassment measure may be obvious, and not
particularly comforting for a blushing individual, the fact that you are seen as more sincere and
more likely to forgive when you are blushing means that blushing can be seen to increase
the perceived trust and forgiveness of a red-faced individual. In other words, the emotional display
of blushing can be used to enhance the display of your personal character traits. We see this
here as every emotion is taken more seriously with a bit of redness and blush.
In essence, the evidence shows how blushing can be used as a tool to communicate with others.
If blushing shows you to be more likely to forgive, and more sincere, it can be used
artificially to subconsciously portray traits of innocence and trustworthiness. We see this
trend globally through the use of makeup, and specifically, blush, where, most commonly women,
artificially redden their cheeks. Why does this matter for aesthetics?
Well before I tell you, I’m going to have to ask you to hit that like button first.
In return I’ll give you a 4 second clip of the jigglypuff song.
An earlier study in 2016 by a group of US and UK researchers statistically proved that increased
redness in a female’s face increases their perceived attractiveness. This evidence can
potentially be explained by the feelings of trust and innocence that are provoked by the increased
blood flow to the facial region. To do this, computer technology artificially reddened, or
took away the red from multiple pictures of women. The result was a spectrum of red faces, with the
leftmost image representing an under-reddened edit, and the rightmost image representing an
over-reddened edit. In this sequence, the middle photo is the actual picture of the individual,
which was not used in the study. Basically, the researchers asked the participants, 133 18-67 year
olds, which face they found more attractive across multiple trials and multiple faces.
As the results showed, increased facial redness was seen as more sexually attractive.
A further experiment within the study sought to understand what else the redness of a face could
mean to a male participant. In this trial, men were asked to rate either the under-reddened or
over-reddened individual on a variety of factors, responding to questions such as ‘‘How healthy does
this face look?’’ , ‘‘How intelligent does this face look? , and perhaps most interestingly,
“How honest does this face look?”, tying into our initial concept of how blushing can induce greater
perceptions of trust. The results, expressed here as a correlation diagram, show how strong
the effect of a redder face is for each of the displayed personality characteristics. Negative
numbers represent a negative correlation between redder faces and the personality trait, such
that the conservatism of a person is judged to be reduced as a face gets redder. Bigger numbers also
represent a greater effect. Asterixis next to the numbers represent when a result is significant,
so we can only say there is a relationship between the redness of a face and a personality trait,
if the associated number has an asterix. As such, we need to retract our view about redness
and conservatism. Looking back specifically on the numbers with asterixis, we can infer that
the redness of a face is positively related to the attractiveness of an individual,
with a value of 0.47, positively related to the healthiness of an individual, with a value of
1.24, and positively related to the honesty of an individual, with a value of 0.53. This
means that as the redness of a face increases, the healthiness, attractiveness, and honesty
of the individual as perceived by the viewer increases. This ties in nicely with the earlier
study, whereby blushing can be seen as a predictor of trustworthiness and honesty. It should be noted
that there is a case of “too much redness”, which subsequently decreases ratings of honesty
and attractiveness, and is a common problem for many people, often diagnosed as Rosaecea.
Now let's look back at healthiness, where facial redness positively predicted the healthiness of
an individual, shown through the value of 1.54, which in turn positively predicted attractiveness,
shown through the value of 0.36. This phenomenon has its roots in fertility,
where high fertility was signalled by red skin colouration. This is what started blush as makeup,
with ancient Egyptians using blush to showcase high fertility to potential partners,
hence portraying better healthiness and increasing their attractiveness.
The general take from this video is that blushing has some positive outcomes that
can increase the physical attractiveness of an individual, most commonly women, as well
as the perception of honesty, healthiness and the likability of a personality. This has led to the
mass marketing of artificial blush in the form of makeup, which intrinsically links the ideas
of healthiness (through fertility) and likeability to result in increased attraction. It’s important
that we don’t completely overlook some of the negative attributions of blushing, as excessive
blushing can lead to social anxiety, and can also be brought upon by excessive embarrassment
that may reduce the quality of life of an individual.
If you like facial aesthetics based research then subscribe to the channel. In the comments below,
tell me about an experience where you were caught blushing to see if the research has
any anecdotal truths to it. Lastly, if you want your face assessed to get 7000 words of
technical feedback on ways you can improve your looks, or if you want to use our facial assessment
tool which works using Machine Learning and is free, then visit the QOVES website.