When you read the opening sentence, your heart skipped a beat, didn’t it?
Of course, the stress experienced by those who are obsessed with grammar is greater, but there is a research that proves this stress and pain.
“Fight or flight” is everywhere.
A study conducted at the University of Birmingham showed that grammatical errors lead to a significant increase in stress levels.
The participants were made to listen and read texts with or without errors. Meanwhile, heart rate variability (HRV) was monitored to reveal its effect on the autonomic nervous system.
In the HRV system, normally the length of time tends to change when a person is relaxed, but becomes regular when they are stressed.
When participants were exposed to grammatical errors, their HRV became regular, resulting in their stress response.
In fact, this reaction is similar to the “fight or flight” response we experience when we feel danger in our body.
At the root of this stress response lies the idea that language is an innate ability.
We all absorb the rules without realizing it while learning our native language, so when we notice grammatical errors, we feel uneasy in our subconscious.
University of Birmingham Professor Dagmar Divjak states that grammatical errors reveal that people have an internal knowledge of their language skills.
Even if we do not consciously respond to a grammatical error, our subconscious perceives this error and our body reacts to stress without realizing it.
These studies can help us understand why grammatical errors evoke such strong reactions in some people.
What’s the grammatical mistake that annoys you the most? We welcome comments.
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