The Startling Scientific Secret of Blush
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Red is the color of love
Being in love has certain physiologic effects on your body: the thought of your loved one can make your heart beat faster, a glimpse can make your armpits damp with sweat, and a single flirtatious remark can turn your face a deep crimson red. Of all these effects, it’s the blushing that most obviously betrays your innermost feelings. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop that tell tale color from spreading across your cheeks. But surprisingly, our ability to see colors may have actually evolved to help us spot these emotional cues.
Blood and blush
According to NewScientist, that’s exactly what Mark Changizi and his fellow researchers at Caltech in Pasadena, California are proposing. Realizing that blushing is caused by an increase in oxygen content in the blood, they charted how the color of blood changes with and without oxygen. They found that the color difference was most obvious in the range of 540 and 560 nanometers which just happens to be the same part of the light spectrum at which the cone cells in primates’ eyes are the most sensitive.
Red eye
This led to their theory that primates developed the ability to discriminate this shift in red color so they could read emotional cues that cause blushing. This in contrast to previous theories that presumed color vision evolved to help us pick out ripe fruits. So, presumably, there’s some evolutionary advantage to being able to read emotional cures - maybe the ability to detect blushing helps in the process of mate selection. (Of course you blush for other reasons than being in love, but cut us a break here, we’re trying to be romantics!)
So every time we brush on a little Clinique or Sonia Kashuk blush
, we’ve got the power of millions of years of evolution on our side. Boys beware!
Do you have naturally rosy cheeks or do you wear blush to make yourself more attractive? Leave a comment and show the rest of the Beauty Brains community your true colors.






