Have you ever wondered why you want to squeeze something you find really cute, or why you tend to sleep better with background noise? While you may be able to come up with a surface-level answer to these questions, what if there was a greater reason tied to nature? In fact, numerous human behaviors have primal and biological explanations that aren’t always common knowledge. Let’s dive into it so you can understand why you behave the way you do.
- It’s So Cute, I need to squeeze it!
Have you ever seen a really squishy baby, and you just want to squeeze it until…You know? If so, you aren’t the only one to feel his way. In science, this is labeled as cuteness aggression. According to The National Library of Medicine, which is a collection of life science, biomedical, and health research, when something is really cute, you feel a rush of dopamine from the reward centers in your brain. The level of dopamine is so high that an instinctive response occurs to level it out and bring you back down to earth. Your natural response to this dopamine release is to act in aggression. Not because you’re angry, but because from a primal perspective, too much dopamine can lower your guard and make you an easy target in the wild. In order to combat this, you react with aggression to protect yourself. While this instinct isn’t as necessary as it once was when we didn’t have modern society, it’s still a very much real response.
- Nothing Like Falling Asleep to Some White Noise
Do you ever find yourself constantly having a fan running, something playing on your phone to help you sleep, or your window cracked when it begins to drizzle at night? We can trace this behavior to our ancestors. When mankind lived before modern civilization, we would travel and survive in groups. Having a group ensured safety and protection. At nighttime, there would often be the sounds of peers rustling around, or maybe a campfire setup to keep you warm. Maybe others weren’t quite asleep yet and were up doing something before resting for the night. Whatever sound was going on, that signaled to their brains that they were safe with their group. If we look at the inverse of that, the absence of sound would signal that your group has abandoned you, and you are no longer safe. While this isn’t totally parallel to modern day, it’s more applicable than you may think. Did you grow up with siblings and a loud family? Did you use to share a room with someone? Do you have pets or animals? According to Javok Journal, an online news blog that gathers a variety of research and news to keep readers up to date on a range of interests, any of these noisy environments, once altered, could result in anxiety when you have to sleep in a silent room. The sound of your dog breathing in the bed next to you at night signals that you have a protector and you’re not alone. The sound of the TV downstairs, from your parents watching a late-night show while you’re trying to fall asleep, once removed, reminds you that you are alone. No sound represents the absence of something or someone, which makes humans instinctively uncomfortable, which is why white noise and a running fan tend to ease our minds and make falling asleep less of a task and more of a ritual. Sound equates to safety.
- Why Can’t I Stop Doodling?
When you’re listening to a lecture in a class, or you finish a test early, or you’re stressed, do you find yourself doodling? If so, just know that this isn’t uncommon, and has a really interesting explanation! While Doodling may seem like simple and mindless sketches created when bored or stressed, they are actually messages from the unconscious mind. Doodling, by definition, isn’t a well-thought-out piece of art. It tends to consist of mindless squiggles and sketches that you pay little to no attention to. While you may not find meaning in this action, scientists do. According to the Cal State LA University Library, which maintains vast documents of research, doodling is a fascinating action that can reveal a lot about your mental health and state of mind. When doing mindless sketches, you don’t anticipate being judged or examined. The pencil on paper acts as a second outlet to say whatever you want, even if you don’t realize it. While studies on this are limited, it’s interesting to think about how our unconscious mind can reach out when absent-mindedly drawing. Doodling is also an outlet for anxiety, or the feeling of not knowing what to do with your hands. By nature, people feel unprepared and vulnerable if their hands aren’t doing some kind of action, so doodling is a fun way to see those instincts peek out in a classroom.
- Why Does an Awkward Situation Feel Like I’m Getting Mauled?
Have you ever walked in the school hallways and seen an old friend with whom you have a horrible past? Maybe you felt fear, an instinct to run away, or you couldn’t think fast enough to figure out what to do because your brain completely froze. This is somehow completely normal. According to Very Well Mind, an online organization that prioritizes educating people on mental health, when we are put in situations that make us really uncomfortable or anxious, we tend to feel very strong feelings of fight, flight, or freeze. Another example of this that many people can probably relate to is getting caught outside by a DoorDash delivery or an Amazon truck. While your immediate reaction might be to run, it can vary depending on the person. However, there are many everyday mild situations like this that can leave us with that sense of life or death. Now, while the chances of getting caught by an Amazon driver while you’re letting your dog outside most likely won’t end in death (the chances are never 0), you may still get that rush of emotion like it will, so you respond accordingly. This is directly rooted in our animal instincts to survive in nature. Fight is meant to defend yourself from harm, flight is meant to flee a situation that you know you cannot survive or win, and freezing is meant to protect yourself by making you minimally visible to an enemy. While freeze is more of a confusing one, think about how a fawn’s first instinct when caught in danger is to drop to the ground and freeze. It knows it can’t run fast enough to escape, and it’s not big enough to fight back, so it freezes as its only form of defense. This can be compared to when you’re downtown or out and about, and somebody yells something at you from further away. Your jaw may drop in shock, not quite knowing what to do except keep your mouth shut and process what just happened. So why do humans respond with life-saving instincts when faced with 1st world problems? It’s just simply a defense mechanism deeply engraved in our design, meant to keep us safe, even if that Amazon driver is perfectly nice.
At the end of the day, nature tends to steer our daily lives more than we think. Cuteness aggression, fight or flight, doodling in class, and falling asleep to white noise are all tied back to prehistoric times and how our ancestors used to survive in the wild. It’s remarkable how we have retained these primal instincts, where even the urge to pinch a baby’s cheeks is rooted in evolutionary survival.
