Many people may feel uncomfortable when confronted with a particular category of images that depict groups or clusters of small holes. According to some researchers, it is a phobia, trypophobia, and it is particularly widespread.
Scientists estimate that 20% of the population is seriously disgusted by these images and that most people are affected by them, to a lesser extent.
“I think we all suffer from trypophobia, but to different degrees,” suggested Dr. Geoff Cole, one of the first scientists to study the disorder, told BBC News last April. “As with many other psychological phenomena – autism, for example – everyone’s balance is on the scale.”
Pixabay
Despite being extremely common, trypophobia remains remarkably under-researched.
“This is basically because no one knew about it until the internet came along and these images were shared on forums,” says Cole, who published the first academic paper on the topic in 2013. “Since we have only just noticed this phenomenon, there are still many things we don’t know.”
Trypophobia, a real phobia?
It’s easy to be skeptical about trypophobia, explains BBC News, since it first appeared on message boards in the early 1990s. Even his name, which means “hole” and “fear” in Greek, appeared on an Internet forum, far from the attention of health experts.
Photo from Wikipedia
But despite these questionable beginnings, Mr. Cole showed that images with strong contrasts between dark and light and lots of holes grouped in a small area can have a real impact on a person’s body.
Photo from Facebook | Trypophobia
His research showed that trypophobes’ heart rates can increase significantly when they look at images of clusters of holes, be they honeycombs or bubbles in chocolate, for example.
Those affected may also experience nausea, sweating, itching and even panic attacks.
Photo by Semantic Scholar
“It’s the visual equivalent of someone scratching their nails on a chalkboard: the brain doesn’t like the neural spikes that produce these images,” says Cole.
Although some people are terribly afraid of trypophobic patterns, there are tutorials on the Internet that allow those who want to make up their body with such patterns.