Everybody feels embarrassed at times but nothing quite emphasizes the feeling, like a completely red face.
So the blushing serve a functional purpose, or as simply to embarrass you further.
Blushing is an involuntarily and uncontrollable reflex caused by the sympathetic nervous system, which activates your fight or flight response.
The release of adrenaline speeds up your heart rate and breathing, dilates your pupils and redirect energy to your muscles.
All these effects contribute to the feelings you experience when embarrassed.
But the adrenaline also dilates your blood vessels to improve blood flow and oxygen delivery.
Interestingly, even though veins generally don't respond to adrenaline,
the ones in your face do.
But this effect is entirely exclusive to humans.
The scientists still out on this one; even Charles Darwin commented that blushing is
"The most peculiar and most human of all expressions."
But there are some scientific theories into why we blush.
The main theory suggests that blushing evolved as a means to show regret or remorse
within the social codes of human society.
By blushing, we're showing others that we recognise we misstepped socially
and in many ways, it acts as an nonverbal physical apology for our mistake.
In this sense, blushing is purely social-based.
And it's much more reliable than a verbal or behavioral expression of remorse
,which can be controlled or faked.
To the people who see you blush, they understand from experience what you're feeling.
Interestingly, this aligns with another theory that our strong color vision developed to be exceptional at to deducing hue changes
and skin and as a result, emotions.
serveral studies have found that poeple who blushed after a social-mashup
are much more favorable to onlookers.
So blush! It's a helpful bodily signal with the face saving peoperty.
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