[CURIOSITIES] Why do we humans touch our faces constantly?

[YaKuZa--BoSs]

People put their hands to their faces, on average, 23 times every hour. A study proposes an ancestral explanation for this behavior.

 

 

 

 

Avoiding touching your face with your (potentially contaminated) fingers is one of the most important recommendations issued by health authorities as a strategy to prevent coronavirus infection. But why is it so difficult not to?

Touching the face is too frequent behavior in humans, and in all primates in general: people put their hands on their faces, on average, 23 times per hour, and approximately seven touches per hour specifically target the nostrils . But this attitude does not respond only to a mere custom. To stop touching our faces would be equivalent to giving up one of our instincts, and that would have its evolutionary explanation, according to a study recently published by the Department of Neurobiology of the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel. Touching our faces could be related to the tendency of humans to smell ourselves.

The self-sniffing trend is clearly evident in the stereotypical behavior of land mammals: rodents, canines, and felines often smell themselves or their own body secretions.

All primates touch their faces very frequently. In 20-minute observations, gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans touched their faces an average of 19.87, 24.2, and 12.12 times, respectively, that is, about once per minute. The researchers 'hypothesis is that primates' tendency to touch their faces corresponds to this tendency observed in other mammals of olfactory self-exploration: “Humans do not smell themselves as mice, cats, and dogs do. However, if we abstract to contemplate human behavior without bias, in fact, we would see an animal that often smells itself, "the researchers explain.

The aforementioned study that observed primates also included humans: during a 20-minute observation, 18 participants (unaware that they were being observed) touched their faces an average of 13.33 times, that is, at a speed similar to that of of the orangutans.

The frequency of fingering varies slightly depending on the activity being carried out, also depending on whether the study participants know themselves to be observed or not, but it is still a very common behavior. For example, one study filmed 10 participants, each observed individually over a three-hour period performing office tasks. Despite knowing they were being watched, which could have increased self-awareness and minimized personal contact, they nonetheless raised their hands to their faces approximately 16 times an hour.

 

Conscious or unconscious act?

 

Although scientists speculated that touching your face to smell yourself is largely an unconscious act, they noted that, in addition, humans also consciously smell themselves with high frequency. Using a questionnaire with a sample of 400 respondents, 94% of them acknowledged having smelled themselves.

Although this very frequent behavior has almost no traction in the medical or psychological literature: "We have suggested a psychological and cultural explanation for this paradox, but we want human sniffing to become a formal research topic."