What is the reason for such a crippling reaction to uncomfortable social interactions?
EDIT: Thank for the replies so far, I am more wondering from an animal behaviour perspective. Starting to get the sense it is a form of social preservation because you can dissociate yourself from the bad thing.
In: Biology
I’ve tried to condition my dog to not bark at strangers, but she’s a watch dog at heart. If I’m in the room and she barks at a noise outside, she’ll immediately look at me, put her ears back and flinch, then break eye contact and stop barking. A doggy cringe if ever I’ve seen one.
As for why people or animals might do it, I can only guess. Some mechanism in our brains makes us close our eyes and will this awkward situation to go away. A holdover from our childhoods to close our eyes and deny that object permanence exists so that the cause of our discomfort also no longer exists? An acceptance that we can’t avoid this situation so we close our eyes and brace for impact emotional or physical?
You react negatively to anything “out of place” or something that can impact your social/hierarchical standing. Such discomfort gives you a signal to not do something that can make you an outcast.
There’s a lot of things that say humans feel/think that animals can’t, and they’re still unsure on so much shit. We don’t even understand our own brains let alone an animal’s. Let alone EVERY animal, when dolphins and chimps are more intelligent than half of Reddit.
Humans are intensely social and we tend to mirror the emotions of who we’re observing. Happy people make you feel happy, angry people make you feel angry, seeing someone get hit in the balls makes everyone around wince and so on.
So seeing someone get embarrassed causes second hand embarrassment.
This definitely occurs in animals and humans.
See also having your feather’s ruffled, birds that actually ruffle their feathers, cats who’s hair stands on end. It’s can be done without intention, they have the same back crawling feeling of just insecure cringe.
If you did something awkward or socially unacceptable, you might be an outcast or kicked out of the tribe. Kicked out of the tribe? No food, no protection, no mating. You die, and so does your bloodline. Cringing is a conditioned survival response.
Same reason it’s so devastating for a child to feel like their parent doesn’t Love them. We’ve evolved to see that as a threat to survival
Source: my parents don’t love me
Edit: in response to your edit, I think most of the same principles apply to animals. I don’t think an animal that doesn’t rely on others of its species to survive would have as much of a cringe response
We cringe because we are more civil than animals. Animals will simply attack those who are weaker. We cringe instead.
For example, you have a socially awkward nerd. A nice guy will mildly cringe, but still be cool to the guy. Most will just cringe and deal with him. A bully will flat out attack him, he doesn’t have the civility others do.
So the next time you see an animal pounce on another, just know that if that animal were human, he’d just cringe instead of pounce.
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