Some Musings on Screams
I saw a video a few days ago of a plane engine exploding and catching fire shortly after departing from Sao Paulo. The cameraman was laser-focused on the engine itself the entire time, but his video caught screams of terror from the passengers in the background.
I can imagine that scenario was scary enough in itself, and the screaming probably made it even scarier.
This got me thinking about screams. What are they for? Why do they sound like they do? And why are they the face (or sound) of horror?
Screaming bookends a human life. It’s the first behavior we display, and, for the unlucky among us, it may also be the last. A scream is perhaps the most difficult sound to ignore, and has undoubtedly been structured over evolutionary time to travel a long distance, cut through background noise, and hijack the attention of anyone it reaches.
Many animals have alarm calls. One of the key functions is to alert other members that a threat has been detected, in part to warn others around you and in part to recruit help to the caller. Many social animals use specific alarm calls for specific predators. For example, vervet monkeys have distinct calls for snakes, leopards, and eagles that elicit protection behaviors specific to those predators.
Human screams aren’t so specialized. While we may scream out of fear, anger, or surprise, we don’t have distinct screams for different categories of threat in the way that some other social mammals do. It’s possible that our ability to communicate information through language rendered distinct alarm calls unnecessary. However, the scream itself still serves a useful function due to its specific acoustic qualities and deeper evolutionary roots that act as a powerful, instinctual signal.
In this way, human screams are perhaps a little more selfish than the alarm calls of vervet monkeys, marmots, and other social creatures. Our alarm calls say less about what others should do to protect themselves and instead focus more on the distress of the screamer.
Emotional intensity seems to be the common denominator in human screams. A bigger surprise, scarier threat, and more frustrating situation are more likely to provoke a scream. It seems to me that this connects to some of my thoughts about vulnerability or helplessness as the core of fear.
So, why do we scream?
Out of Fear: When something is more dangerous, you become more vulnerable and helpless. Consequently, your likelihood of screaming goes up.
Out of Surprise: When something suddenly surprises you, like a jump scare in a horror movie, you scream because it has caught you off-guard. Being caught unprepared for an event makes you vulnerable.
Out of Anger: Even frustration follows this pattern. You try again and again to bend something to your will, and your repeated failures signal one thing: your helplessness in effecting change. This is probably why babies cry so much. Everything is a monumental challenge when you’re an infant.
Out of Joy?: It’s less common that humans scream out of joy, but it does happen. I think this is probably due to surprise rather than happiness per se. When we scream out in joy, it’s usually because something good suddenly happened that we did not expect to happen — we see a loved one unexpectedly, match our numbers to the lottery drawing, or have an expensive gift unveiled to us. The first input to the human mind in this instance is “schema change/surprise,” which can trigger a scream. It’s moments later that we make sense of the surprise and tag it as fortuitous.
Perhaps, then, screams don’t specify emotions or specific threats, but instead signify vulnerability. We are often vulnerable due to fear, hence the association between the two, but we can also feel vulnerable in the face of a surprise (good, bad, or neutral) and due to frustration with a situation we cannot change.
The prototypical “fear face” may be a precursor to a scream. Your mouth is widened, ready to let out a screeching alarm call to those not within your line of sight. And, as with the scream, it may signal vulnerability rather than fear per se.
We identify the fear face and screaming with horror, but we may be confused about the causation. While it’s often assumed that these three things are fused together by fear, they may instead be wed by vulnerability.