Study Helps Explain Why You’re Socially Awkward

Being socially awkward speaks for the name itself: stressful sweating, the avoidance of human contact and wanting to crawl into a hole…You’re too busy hyperventilating over the fact that somebody, like a guy for instance, is trying to make eye contact with you thinking: “You mean I have to talk to him? With my voice?!”Good, there’s hope for socially-deficient-yet-fabulous individuals in the house — and all thanks to a new study on oxytocin. Fret not for there’s a breakthrough for social disorders. Here it is.

Although oxytocin’s claim to fame is the warm and fuzzies it gives us about our romantic relationships, a recent study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology revealed it also makes us more accepting of strangers. A lack of oxytocin could be the reason why so many of us are socially awkward when hanging with friends.

The study deets

As part of the study, participants watched a video of their own face morphing into an unfamiliar one, and vice versa. Those who’d been given oxytocin in the form of nasal spray identified and accepted the new face more quickly when it appeared. Also, when they weren’t given the spray, they rated their own face as more pleasing, but after a good ol’ hormone boost, the attractiveness between the familiar and unfamiliar faces evened out.

The flip side of the coin

Obviously, there’s still a lot of research that needs to be done — another study discovered that oxytocin has a dark side. Scientists at Northwestern found that the hormone strengthens social memory in a specific part of the brain, so depending on how bad the experience was, it could actually make your social awkwardness worse.

What does this all mean?

Now that they know both sides of the oxytocin coin, I’m sure it won’t be long before they fully define the other factors that play a role — like your baseline anxiety level and other hormone levels — in order to create a successful treatment for social anxiety.

The success of this potential breakthrough is really more to do with the action we take ourselves — we can’t expect oxytocin to do all the work for us. Being socially awkward can feel like a complete nightmare, creepy funhouse mirrors and all, but a hormone fix can only take us so far. It can’t charm a cute guy on our behalf or go out on a date for us. It can’t help us through the Shakespearean tragedy we turn rejection into either. That’s all on us…

We already know avoiding awkwardness just makes things worse — you can only take up crocheting for so long. Until we have our big girl pants on though, it’d be nice to have a nasal spray wingwoman to help us through the initial stress of socializing so we can build some really fab relationships.

Source: sheknows.com

(Image credit: sheknows.com)