Unlike animals, humans are able to shout for joy, which would be the result of evolution. More surprisingly, non-alarming cries are perceived and processed by the brain more efficiently than alarming cries.
- The six emotions capable of making us scream are pain, anger, fear, pleasure, sadness and joy.
- The fact that the brain perceives non-alarming cries more quickly could probably be due to the demands of evolved and complex social contexts in humans.
Screaming is not bad, it even has therapeutic virtues. Screaming can for example allow to evacuate the stress linked to the current health crisis. But be careful not to shout too much at your children because a harsh education can harm their good development. It is possible to shout to express other emotions. Swiss researchers from the University of Zurich suggest that there are six. In a study published April 13 in PLOS Biologythey review these emotions and argue that non-alarming cries are perceived and processed by the brain more effectively than alarming cries.
Animals don’t cry when they’re happy
Unlike animals, for whom cries are used as an alarm signal in case of danger, humans can shout to express positive emotions. Previous studies have been conducted on the subject but they have only focused on screams of fear. In this new research, scientists examined which emotions, no matter whether positive or negative, are likely to make us cry.
For the study, the researchers asked 12 volunteers to vocalize positive and negative cries that could be triggered by various situations. Another group of participants had to rate the emotion that caused the screams and classify them into different categories while they had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Screams of joy, a result of evolution
After analyzing the results, the researchers estimated that there are six emotions capable of making us cry: pain, anger, fear, pleasure, sadness and joy. They also found, surprisingly, that listeners responded faster and more accurately, and with higher neural sensitivity, to non-alarming and positive cries than to alarming cries. Specifically, they elicited more activity in many auditory and frontal brain regions.
“The results of our study are surprisingconcluded Sascha Frühholz, lead author of the study and researcher at the University of Zurich. Researchers generally assume that the cognitive system of primates and humans is specifically tuned to detect danger and threat signals in the environment as a survival mechanism, believed to be the main purpose of communicative signaling in calls. Although this appears to be true for call communication in primates and other animal species, call communication appears to have diversified widely in humans, representing a major evolutionary step. Humans share with other species the potential to signal danger by shouting, but it seems that only humans shout to also signal positive emotions such as extreme joy and pleasure. The signaling and perception of these positive emotions in cries appears to have gained priority in humans over alarm signaling. This shift in priority could possibly be due to the demands of evolved and complex social contexts in humans..”
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