why humans seem particularly bad at understanding devastating news, such as the death of a loved one. Why is our first reaction usually to not being able to process the information? Is it not psychologically disadvantageous to not be able to understand and respond to such news?
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Denial, when we don’t let ourselves believe or accept bad news, happens as a defense mechanism, basically a way of protecting yourself from feeling bad. The reason why we humans tend to deny reality when bad things occur has a lot of theories behind it.
Some scientists theorize it may go back to when we had just evolved to have some of our most human traits, the ones that allow us to recognize that every individual has unique intentions, beliefs and desires. We started to create symbolic art, and for the first time humans began to really care about what happened to the dead and placed more meaning into how the dead were handled (in a way the earliest form of a funeral). At this stage in our evolution, it’s thought that we may have just started to become aware of our own mortality, that we do not live forever. Some scientists think that as humans began to contemplate the intentions of those around them, they began reflecting more deeply on the meaning of life itself, and this examination led to the frightening awareness of their mortality. To cope with these new fears, humans evolved the unique ability to deny reality.
(Very much plagiarized from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-reviews-denial/ because it’s Reddit and I can) 🙂
As for it being psychologically disadvantageous, one could argue it could be. But psychologically disadvantageous in today’s world doesn’t mean we necessarily have any way to change this in ourselves. It generally seems to be a trait we evolved to have many thousands of years ago, and while it may cause some problems for us in today, there’s a strong argument for it being part of what makes us humans. Our understanding of what life is, and the meaning we give to it, plays a big role in how we live our lives.
Of course this is all loosely based on the reading I did and what I personally believe. The theories behind it are definitely very interesting and a cool thing to read about. There are certainly subjective aspects to my answer, so I encourage you to not blindly accept what I say as correct or even true to you.
Humans are very much learning creatures, we don’t do a whole lot on instinct. Because of this we aren’t particularly good at doing anything very well the first time we try it, this includes emotional things like grief.
The people who have trouble grasping devastating news are usually having to handle something like that for the first time and aren’t very well equipped to do so. People who have had the misfortune to have already handled significant tragedy do better with devastating news.
Humans don’t always remember stuff when told the first time. We also try and make best guesses based on past experiences and it’s hard to guess based on an experience we’ve never had, like grandma being dead, especially when we are so used to grandma being alive we keep expecting her to appear because that’s literally how it’s always been. It takes time to update the files, and it can be painful having to remember each time – it’s an emotional as well as cognitive experience so there’s a lot going on. There’s some more info about predictions and the brain here in a TED talk by Lisa Feldman Barrett: https://youtu.be/0gks6ceq4eQ
A further consideration could be that hearing someone you love has tied could be overwhelming to the point of trauma. Traumatic experiences sometimes skip the hippocampus (part of the brain involved in making memories) as well as language areas of the brain due to the need to access primal survival functions like fight, fight and freeze responses. Accessing the primal part of the brain takes less time (even if it’s a millionth of a second) compared to the comparatively newer areas like language and complex thought. This could be why people can’t recall trauma and get PTSD where they replay/experience events outside of conscious awareness.
This is a remembering of info from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk, an excellent resource about trauma and the brain/body, by a human so may not be recalled 100% perfectly!
But when gettng the news that someone has died, most of the time people don’t have to actually be Told. I’ve had to talk to people about a loved one’s death, in my job and in my family, and no one actually needed the word “died”. Say the name, and the rest of the message gets through.
“Mom is… ” And the listener nods and draws back or cries or reacts without finishing the sentence. When I worked hospice, and the CNA came up to me with the “Um… ” I knew one of our patients had died.
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