For as long as we’ve had mirrors, we’ve been wary of them. For the ancients, they were connections to the gods, or to the land of the dead; they reflected not just your face but your very soul. Those who disrespected the devices by damaging them, or even simply gazing too long into them, were inviting the wrath of fate.
Over the centuries, mirrors’ reputations for magic and mystery only grew. We can see the evolving mythology in the “magic mirror” that doomed Snow White, or the Victorian ritual of looking in a mirror on Halloween night to reveal the face of your future husband – or else a skull, signifying your death alone.
Even today, mirrors continue to draw us in. We avoid breaking them, lest we suffer seven years’ bad luck; there’s even a whole franchise of horror movies dedicated to a mirror-myth, and they’re a staple technique when filmmakers want to wrongfoot their audiences – think of those famous scenes in Black Swan or The Matrix for famous examples.
So, what makes mirrors so reliably disconcerting?
In a mirror, darkly
Like the images in the glass, our fears around mirrors are something of a reflection of themselves. “People can become afraid of mirrors for the same reasons that they can become afraid of anything,” says Melissa Norberg, a clinical psychologist specializing in anxiety and exposure therapy, and a professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University. “Learning.”
There are a few ways we learn fear, Norberg tells IFLScience. The first is through direct experience: “so, let’s say a dog attacked us and ended up biting us,” she explains. “In this scenario, we feel felt fear and pain. Pretty strong feelings and emotions. Our brain connects those feelings with the dog.”
“So the next time we see that dog, we are likely to feel fear,” she says. “We can also generalize this learning to similar looking dogs – ‘If one dog attacked us maybe they all can!’”
Can mirrors elicit this kind of response? Initially, you might think no – after all, short of accidentally falling on top of you, there’s not much a mirror can do to actually hurt you. But stare into one in a dark room for too long, and you might witness your very own horror show: your own face deforming in front of you, the face of a stranger, or animals; even demons or monstrous beings, their features melting and flowing through one another.
It sounds like yet another slumber party legend – but it’s totally legit. It’s called the “strange face illusion”, and we’re not entirely sure what causes it. Maybe it’s a manifestation of Troxler fading, the same phenomenon that makes much of an image disappear when you stare at one part of it for too long; perhaps it’s the result of some kind of psychological dissociation, causing us to seemingly literally become “foreign” to ourselves.
Whatever the cause, such images are bound to be disconcerting at best; downright terrifying at worst. And like it or not, our brains are hardwired to learn from that fear response – and quickly, too.
“Our minds are built to learn associations to help us navigate the world,” Norberg tells IFLScience. “When we become emotionally charged our minds draw a connection with that feeling at what immediately preceded it.”
Looking into the mirror and seeing a warped or monstrous face staring back at you instead of your own? Well, that’s bound to elicit some strong emotions. Some experts think it might even be the origin for legends like Bloody Mary and the Candyman – malevolent beings that live in the mirror and come out to haunt us when we provoke them.
But in that link, there’s another aspect to our cultural fear surrounding mirrors. After all, an urban legend can’t survive without word of mouth – and it turns out:
Mirror images
Humans are simple things: when people tell us something, we believe them.
That’s especially true when what we’re being told might keep us alive. “Science has taught us that we can learn fear associations [from] being told about something dangerous,” Norberg tells IFLScience. For example, “a parent consistently telling us that dogs are dangerous.”
It’s a pretty basic instinct, really – finding things scary, after all, is good for survival. “Fear […] alerts us to potential danger so that we can engage in protective behaviors,” Norberg points out. But it’s also a fatal flaw in the human blueprint, ripe for exploitation: “Horror movies are designed to elicit fear,” she says. “They are suspenseful, and they contain graphic imagery. They set the scene for developing and reinforcing fear association we’ve already learnt.”
It is, in other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy: we tell each other these myths because they’re scary – but they’re only scary because we tell them so often. “Let’s take the Candyman for example,” says Norberg. “In this movie, we are told that saying Candyman three times in front of mirror will result in the Candyman killing us (verbal instruction), and then we repeatedly see people saying his name three times in front of the mirror and then being brutally murdered (witnessing danger happen to someone else).”
“Feeling the suspense while waiting for someone being murdered and then seeing it happen and the aftermath (repeatedly!) results in some pretty strong emotions,” she tells IFLScience. “So our mind develops an association with what comes before these emotions (saying Candyman and the mirror) so that we can protect ourselves from danger.”
Reflecting on the issue
We all enjoy a little adrenaline rush now and then – but a true phobia, by definition, has the ability to really ruin your day.
“Fear […] is meant to protect us,” Norberg tells IFLScience, “but sometimes we develop these fear associations when we don’t need to and then act in ways that aren’t helpful. Our life might become quite restricted because of a fear that is not really protecting us.”
A phobia of mirrors is one such fear that’s destined to interfere with everyday life. “Avoiding mirrors might not disrupt our lives too much – or it may,” Norberg says. “If we work or live around a lot of mirrors, trying to avoid them could impair our lives. For example, we might not be able to help the customers we are paid to help.”
On top of that, giving in to the phobia only makes it stronger. “Avoiding what we fear when it’s not actually protecting us from danger only serves to reinforce our unnecessary fear,” explains Norberg. “By reinforcing this fear, the fear we experience when seeing a mirror may increase.”
A little anxiety around mirrors might be expected immediately after interacting with a movie like Candyman or an urban legend like Bloody Mary – but let it fester, and you’re inviting a vicious circle of anxiety and avoidance.
“Obviously the Candyman isn’t real, so this fear association isn’t helpful. It’s doing nothing to protect us,” says Norberg. “By avoiding mirrors, we learn, ‘I didn’t die today and that only happened because I avoided mirrors’, when the truth is that you didn’t die today because the Candyman isn’t real!”
There is a cure for this – but if you’re already wary around mirrors, you’re not going to like it. “Stand in front of [a mirror],” Norberg advises. “Say Candyman three times. Say it like you mean it. Really try to expel him from the mirror. Use every ounce of strength to make him come out. Do it morning, noon, and night.”
“After a few times of trying your best to get him to come out and learning that you don’t die, your fear will be extinguished,” she tells IFLScience. At least, she adds, “until you watch the next ridiculous horror film!”
Source Link: Why People Are Afraid Of Mirrors – And How They Can Fight The Fear
