From “The Blushing Brain,” a study conducted at the University of Amsterdam that was published in July in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Sixty-three female adolescents aged 16–20 from the Netherlands took part in this study. On the first visit, they were asked to sing karaoke while being recorded on video. Participants sang four songs: “Hello” by Adele, “Let It Go” from Frozen, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey, and “All the Things She Said” by t.A.T.u. These songs were chosen because several music experts judged them to be very difficult to sing, which should ensure that participants would later be embarrassed watching themselves singing them.

On the second visit to the laboratory, participants were instructed to watch videos of themselves and other participants singing karaoke. To increase embarrassment, they were told that other participants were watching their videos nearby. To control for the possibility that a participant would experience vicarious embarrassment for the other participant who sang similarly (badly) to themselves, we introduced an additional control condition: participants watched videos of a professional singer, prerecorded and introduced to participants as “another participant of the study.”

We found that blushing is higher when watching oneself sing than when watching others sing. Watching someone else sing equally badly sometimes resulted in blushing. This was not the case, however, when watching the professional singer sing. Her singing was of a high quality. Our participants sang, on average, significantly worse than the professional singer did.