Hole-y Phobia May Have Evolutionary Origins
Scientific American:
If the sight of Swiss cheese makes you melt or the thought of a honeycomb gets you buzzing, you may suffer from trypophobia, the most common phobia that you’ve probably never heard of. Trypophobia is the fear of holes. People with the phobia experience panic attacks, increased heart rate and hot sweats when they see clusters of holes.
A visual scientist who suffers from trypophobia decided to investigate the phenomenon with his colleague. They performed spectral analysis on images that induce trypophobia and found that the fear-inducing images all had similar characteristics related to luminescence, contrast and light wavelengths. But they didn’t know why these features caused such an adverse reaction.
Read the whole story: Scientific American
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