why do we feel a compulsion to scream when we’re in pain?
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To alert others immediately that you are in pain. Either for help or for something someone else might be doing that causes the pain to stop it asap.
Because we evolved living in groups, and brains (and therefore behaviours) evolved the same way limbs and eyeballs did – favouring traits that give you (and/or your relatives) a survival advantage.
If you’re in pain, screaming has a number of possible benefits:
* Someone nearby can hear it and come help
* Someone accidentally hurting you can stop
* Your brother in the next cave over can hear you screaming and run away. He lives to pass on your family’s genes instead of getting eaten by the same sabretooth tiger as you did.
Put all these factors together and repeat over like 200,000 years, and now here we are – descended from ancestors that screamed when they got hurt, because they ended up with slightly more kids on average than those that didn’t scream when hurt.
In addition to the external benefits, screaming does lessen the experience of pain in the person screaming.
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