Embarrassment, that awkward emotion most of us
are way too familiar with.
You start sweating, stuttering, and squirming
in your seat as your cheeks flush pink.
What's that all about?
Why do we get embarrassed?
Let's find out on today's episode of--
Colossal Questions.
We have all kinds of different reactions
when we're embarrassed.
Maybe our face feels hot and our eyes well up.
Others might just smile or try and hide their face
at all costs.
But it's all the same cringy sensation.
There's lots of different things that embarrass us,
unwanted attention, failing at an easy task, rejection,
hurting someone else's feelings, or awkward encounters, just
to name a few.
Whatever the cause, it's all the same thing, embarrassment.
I think it's safe to say that most of us
have a pretty good idea what it feels like to get embarrassed
about something.
But why?
What causes us to feel embarrassment?
And more importantly, why do humans even get embarrassed,
in the first place?
Well, no one can say for certain exactly why we get embarrassed.
But experts have a few strong theories.
Some believe that embarrassment is a way for us to show others
that we know we messed up.
Other experts have tried to understand
why we get embarrassed by breaking it up
into four basic types of embarrassment that we feel.
Faux pas, which are socially awkward situations, accidents,
like spilling juice on your pants,
mistakes, like a poorly timed fart, and failure
to perform a duty or moral obligation,
like getting caught in a lie.
So that's why we get embarrassed, but how?
How does it actually work inside our bodies?
Well, the feeling of embarrassment
all comes from a small thumb-sized lump of tissue
deep inside the front right area of the brain
called the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex.
This part of your brain helps control,
lots of your automatic bodily functions,
like breathing, sweating, making sure your heart beats, pretty
important stuff.
But that part of the brain also helps control your emotions
and decision-making too.
So people who have a slightly smaller pregenual anterior
cingulate cortex tend to be less embarrassed.
It seems the smaller that section of the brain
gets, the less embarrassment any of us feel.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that no matter how
you react in embarrassing situations,
it really just comes down to what's
going on inside your brain, like literally.
So if you happen to be someone who's always
embarrassed by everything or someone who
can't seem to be embarrassed by anything, just try to remember.
It's all in your head.
We've all been there.
Something embarrassing happens or you get caught in the act,
and you blush, turning red like a tomato.
But what causes us to blush when we're embarrassed?
Let's find out on today's episode of--
Colossal Questions.
Your blushing reflex is controlled
by something called your sympathetic nervous system,
which is basically the system that takes over
when you panic and happens without you ever
choosing to blush.
When you get embarrassed, adrenaline
is released into your body, which speeds up your heart rate
and increases blood and oxygen flow because your veins widen,
allowing more blood to flow through your veins than normal.
This causes your cheeks to turn bright rosy-red
because of all the extra blood pumping through your face.
But this special reaction only happens
to the veins in your face, which is
why you don't blush all over.
OK, so that's how we blush.
But why do we do it?
Well, that question seems to be hard for scientists to answer,
absolutely.
But they do have a theory.
Many researchers believe it's our body's way
of admitting we feel guilty or embarrassed about something
and automatically apologizing for it.
According to the theory, someone is much more likely
to forgive you and even feel bad for you
if you blush after getting caught
or doing something embarrassing.
Think about it.
You're trying to pour yourself a drink
and it accidentally spills right as your parents
walk in the room and your face turns bright red from blushing.
Before you can say a word, you're
flush face is your body's way of letting your parents know
it was an accident.
Everybody loves to laugh, even the strictest teacher
in the school will giggle at a well-timed fart.
[laughs]
Fart.
But that begs the question, when did humans first start
laughing?
And why do we love to laugh so much?
Let's find out on today's episode of--
Colossal Questions.
Let's start at the beginning.
When did humans start laughing in the first place?
Well, experts believe that laughter
may have evolved at two specific and distinct points
in human history.
The first type of laughter developed a couple
million years ago, before language was invented
and before we were really even human.
This is the type of laughter we feel when we see something
genuinely fun or funny.
[laughing]
It evolved out of the sounds primates
make while roughhousing.
Like monkeys, humans started laughing this way when danger
was low, basic needs were met, and it was a good safe time
to have some fun.
It's also the kind of laugh we use to relieve tension.
For example, it's the kind of laugh
we use after a particularly scary scene in a movie.
We laugh in a way that says I wasn't that scared.
Fast forward, a couple 100,000 years, and the other type
of laughter emerged in humans.
It's the kind of laughing that we
do most of the time that usually has nothing to do
with something being funny.
As humans started living in bigger groups,
we learned how to use and abuse laughter to get what we want.
This is the type of laughing people
use to hurt someone's feelings or to make someone feel better.
Fast forward another couple 100,000 years to today,
and we still use both types of laughter.
The first type of laughter is obvious.
A friend tells you a joke.
A teacher reaps their pants, you know, funny stuff.
[laughing]
The second type is more subtle, but also more common.
That's the type of laughter we use
when we're nervous, scared, or any time we
laugh at something that wasn't actually a funny joke.
So why do we laugh?
Because it makes us feel safe.
It makes us feel better, and it lets people around us
know that it's OK to let their guard down.
It doesn't matter how big and tough you try to act.
Everybody cries sometimes.
But have you ever stopped and wondered why our eyes get wet
when we weep?
Let's find out on today's episode of--
Colossal Questions.
The instinct to cry tears from her eyes
generally comes from one of two places, a physical reaction
or an emotional reaction.
A physical reaction that could cause you to cry
would be something like getting dust in your eye
or cutting up onions.
If you want to know more about why those kinds of things
cause you to cry, check out her episode on cutting up onions.
But the kind of crying we're talking about today
is emotional crying.
So why do we cry tears when we're emotional?
In order to understand that, we need
to know how our tears work.
Think of them like a wash or bath for your eyes.
Each time you blink, a little bit of liquid, we call tears,
covers your eye to keep it clean, moist, and protected.
After each blink, the tears drains down
the corners of our eyes through a little tunnel
called a tear duct that takes the tear away.
That's why we blink so much.
Each blink replenishes our eye with a fresh tear,
which drains over and over.
Now sometimes our eyes make tears
faster than our tear ducts can drain them.
That causes the tears to spill out of our eyes,
like an overflowing bathtub.
And just like that, we're crying.
People can cry after any strong emotion, happy or sad.
You might cry tears of joy at finding your long lost
puppy or tears of sadness if a friend hurts your feelings.
OK, so that's why we cry, but why do strong emotions cause us
to make a ton of extra tears?
Well, experts still don't know, for sure.
But they have a few theories.
Some believe we cry as a way of communicating with others
that something is really wrong.
Others believe it might help you release toxins and bad hormones
from your body when you're overstressed.
But whatever the reason, one thing is for certain.
Everybody cries.
Everyone freaks out from time to time and blows their top.
But why?
What causes anger?
And why does it cause us to react the way it does?
Let's find out on today's episode of--
Colossal Questions.
Anger might seem like it's totally a bad thing,
but it's a perfectly natural emotion.
In general, we tend to get angry for two basic reasons,
violation of expectations and blockage of goals.
A blockage of goals happens any time something
gets in the way of something you really need or want,
like if you wait in line for tickets only to find out
they're sold out.
And a violation of expectation happens
whenever we detect a disturbance in the natural order of how
we expect things to be, like when
someone breaks the unwritten rules of society,
like cutting in line.
Anger isn't just mental.
There are physical effects, too.
Getting mad releases adrenaline, which makes your blood pressure
rise, your face flushed red with blood,
and causes your muscles to tense up tight.
Almost instantly, we try to assess who's to blame,
how badly it hurts, and what happens if we act with anger.
And maybe most importantly, we try
to understand why the person did what
they did to see if it's worth getting angry over.
For instance, if a friend accidentally
hurts you while playing a game, it's probably not a big deal.
But what if they did it on purpose, well,
then you're much more likely to get angry about it, even
though the pain was the same.
Inside your brain, the amygdala, which
is the part that deals with emotion,
will start to react within a quarter of a second
and start freaking out.
But another part of the brain springs
into action too, the frontal lobe, which
controls logic and reason.
That part of the brain attempts to jump in and keep
the emotional amygdala from having an overly
angry reaction.
So while anger might seem like the stupidest human emotion
and often times it can be, it's actually
quite a complicated balancing act
to try and react the right way to anger inducing situations.
The whole entire reaction happens
in less than two seconds.
That's why the age old advice has always
been one of the simplest ways to deal with anger.
When you get mad, just count calmly to 10
before you let yourself react.
[exhales]
See?
Isn't that better?
[music playing]