Why is our instinct to brace for impact when falling, getting punched, getting into a car accident, etc., when going limp causes less injury/damage to the body?
In: 65
Because we aren’t evolved to survive car accidents.
As others have pointed out, the science on if going limp in a high speed accident is shaky, but let’s assume it is safer for the sake of argument. That *doesn’t* apply to taking punches or short falls. Tensing up does help there, and thus evolution encourages it as a response. Humans have only been encountering high speed collisions where going limp is (maybe) safer for ~150 years; that’s far to short a time for a “limp” response to be evolutionarily favored, especially given how small the effect would be (assuming there is one at all).
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