Why do we have pimples/acne? Pimples are kind of a confusing phenomenon. As far as I can tell, a majority of people finds popping pimples compelling while knowing that this is obviously not “good for you” in the sense that you look worse afterwards, and if you just wait they often do in fact go away on their own again without risking an infection. My first thought was coming up with some lazy evolutionary psychology explanation that maybe popping pimples is so compelling because social grooming (Thinking of apes grooming each others backs) is good for you because that is how you get rid of ticks and make friends. Once people have a drive that compells them to groom other peoples skin, it is now advantageous to have pimples to make friends. That would explain pimples on your back, but it would not explain pimples on your face that well (it makes you look bad).
After that I asked claude why people have pimples. Claudes main observations were that hunter gatherers have few to no pimples, which lines up with studies I find on google scholar[1]. People are blaming some type of change in diet. Given that it’s related to growth hormones, maybe it is just that people are gettting more calories than most modern hunter gatherers, who tend to be in places where food is not always abundant, so people are both taller and have more acne, because somehow growth and sebum production are coupled for some reason that I don’t understand. I guess my evolutionary explanation is probably wrong for why we have pimples, but it might explain why people enjoy messing with them so much.
Why do we have pimples/acne? Pimples are kind of a confusing phenomenon. As far as I can tell, a majority of people finds popping pimples compelling while knowing that this is obviously not “good for you” in the sense that you look worse afterwards, and if you just wait they often do in fact go away on their own again without risking an infection. My first thought was coming up with some lazy evolutionary psychology explanation that maybe popping pimples is so compelling because social grooming (Thinking of apes grooming each others backs) is good for you because that is how you get rid of ticks and make friends. Once people have a drive that compells them to groom other peoples skin, it is now advantageous to have pimples to make friends. That would explain pimples on your back, but it would not explain pimples on your face that well (it makes you look bad). After that I asked claude why people have pimples. Claudes main observations were that hunter gatherers have few to no pimples, which lines up with studies I find on google scholar[1]. People are blaming some type of change in diet. Given that it’s related to growth hormones, maybe it is just that people are gettting more calories than most modern hunter gatherers, who tend to be in places where food is not always abundant, so people are both taller and have more acne, because somehow growth and sebum production are coupled for some reason that I don’t understand. I guess my evolutionary explanation is probably wrong for why we have pimples, but it might explain why people enjoy messing with them so much.
I wish these studies were including pictures. How am I supposed to know whether the way they assess acne between studies is consistent at all?