Unlike primates, which use screams to communicate only anger and fear, humans scream in at least six emotional dimensions: anger, fear, pain, pleasure, sadness and joy – like the loud, joyful screams of children sneaking behind the ice cream . truck.
“Humans share with other species the potential to indicate danger when they scream, but it seems that only humans scream to indicate positive emotions such as extreme joy and pleasure,” said Sascha Frühholz, lead author of a new study. about screams that appeared in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, in a statement.
What type of screaming do you think could decipher people better and faster? Frühholz, an associate professor in the psychology department at the University of Oslo in Norway, said you would be wrong if you chose scary screams – such as anger, fear and pain.
Instead, according to the study, people respond more quickly to screams of joy or pleasure.
“The results of our study are surprising,” Frühholz said. “Researchers generally assume that the primate and human cognitive systems are specifically designed to detect signals of danger and threat to the environment as a mechanism of survival.”
This seems to be true in primates and other animal species, but ‘screaming communication has greatly diversified in humans, and it is an important evolutionary step’, Frühholz added.
Evolutionary purpose of screams
Some screams have a primary evolutionary purpose – an immediate signal of danger.
Yet people also scream in surprise and joy, and we scream (even if only a little) when we are frightened or excited. People seem to be better at processing such screams, according to four different experiments that Frühholz and his team did on small groups of people.
In one of those experiments, study participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, also known as fMRI, while listening to the screams. The scans showed how their brains respond more quickly and accurately to what Frühholz calls ‘non-alarm’ or positive screams than to worrying screams.
Why would that be? Possibly because humans have more complex social clues and situations to deal with than chimpanzees and other primates, Frühholz said. In family life and social circles, for example, people may be more likely to express joy, happiness and amazement than those of fear and thus respond more quickly to these directions.
“It seemed like it gave people a preference to see and perceive these positive emotions in screams,” he said. “This change in priority may be due to the demands of developed and complex social contexts. in people. “