The science behind 'it won't happen to me'

‘Primal mechanism’

Adam Saville
clock • 1 min read

Our brains do their best to keep us from thinking about death, official research shows

It's official. People cannot help but think ‘It won't happen to me' when speaking about life insurance with an adviser. Scientific research has revealed that the human mind shuts down when forced to confront fears of our own demise, The Guardian has reported. Volunteers, as part of a study at Bar Ilan University, Israel, were shown images of faces while their brain activity was being monitored. When shown images of their own face alongside words such as ‘funeral' or ‘burial', the scientists spotted that their brain would block its ability to predict the next image; a sign of our refus...

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