Why Rubbernecking is Dangerous
Newswise – If you slow down to peer at an auto accident, you may be unable to avoid having an accident yourself for a few seconds afterwards, since you momentarily become deaf and blind. The same thing happens when you watch pornography on TV?you may not see or hear your partner for a few seconds after an erotic scene.
Psychologist David Zald says, “We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images.” In other words, emotionally-charged information causes people to become almost blind and deaf to their surroundings for a few seconds after seeing it?enough time to have a dangerous auto accident.
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