Does the photo below give you goosebumps? If yes, don’t worry because 15% of people in the world (18% female, 11% male) also feel uncomfortable when they see holes or lumps and according to scientists, this is called trypophobia.
After much research, scientists have finally identified the source of this fear and it turns out, it is not only a psychological disease but also stems from the biological, genetic nature of people before the time. structures that have a strange contrast to something else in nature.
In 2013, a study published in the journal Neuroscience talked about how patients feel when faced with images full of holes or protrusions such as honeycombs, clusters of soap bubbles: “It’s really sick. people can’t face small, irregular objects, asymmetrical clusters of holes, … Then some people don’t like it, some people scream, cry … “.
Does this lotus flower give you goosebumps?
Although trypophobia is known as “fear of holes” , when digging deeper, scientists discovered that it is not just a fear and that fear is not only about holes. This phobia is not even recognized by the psychological community because it does not meet the definition of a phobia.
Arnold Wilkins, a researcher at the University of Essex, asserts: ” Trypophobia is a form of disgust rather than fear and therefore it is a form of overreaction to potentially dangerous factors . This disgust arises from certain clusters of objects and these objects do not necessarily have holes.When people with trypophobia in them look at the disgusting images, the heart rate increases, becomes more chaotic and activity in the part of the brain that processes vision will increase.”
Wilkins and his colleague Geoff Cole published a study on trypophobia in 2013 with the hypothesis that the underlying cause of this fear is biological . Accordingly, humans have evolved to be afraid of potentially dangerous structures in nature. To determine this effect, the researchers analyzed images on the trypophobia website, including those with holes but no trypophobia trigger, to look for differences.
Result? The team found that this fear may have an evolutionary origin , keeping humans away from dangerous animals because they all share the same trigger patterns of trypophobia . On the other hand, the team also found that the special contrast of some images causes it to trigger trypophobia. In this way, they may be able to find ways to limit and even treat trypophobia in the future.
According to an April 2017 study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, when someone has trypophobia, their heart rate increases and their fingers start to sweat.
While that only used 37 college undergraduates, about 17% of them (roughly a fraction of those in Wilkins’ 2013 study) showed a fear like trypophobia.
“Although trypophobia may seem absurd at first glance, these images may be triggering a primitive threat detection system,” the authors write.
But what in our deep past as humans could lead to the development of a trypophobia trigger system? Currently scientists are still trying to consider including whether such a system exists, and if so, what role does it play?