TELLING someone they’re blushing really does make their cheeks burn even hotter. But a bit of reassurance can go a long way to removing their chagrin.
Peter Drummond and his colleagues at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, investigated the effect of pointing out someone’s blushes. The researchers asked 56 female undergraduates to sing “disco-diva style” to Gloria Gaynor’s seventies classic I Will Survive—an embarrassing enough task after six pints in a karaoke bar, let alone sober in a lab. Then they told half the volunteers that they were blushing (whether or not they were), and the other half that they…
