Have you ever heard of grima? The word is Spanish and refers to the discomfort we feel when someone, for example, scratches the blackboard or other surface with their nails or chalk.
More than a simple “shiver of annoyance”, grima indicates a complex emotional response that involves the brain, the body and our interpretation of sound. It can manifest as goosebumps, physical tension, a feeling of immediate discomfort or the desire to move away from the sound stimulus.
The discovery comes from a study conducted by researchers from the Universities of Madrid and Mainz in Germany, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, which describes it as a real emotional experience, not to be confused with disgust.
In fact, grima elicits mental, auditory and skin reactions that are different from the latter and can be at least partly kept under control through thought. In any case, according to researchers, it is not a simple conditioned reflex but an emotion.
The difference with disgust is important: while disgust is an evolutionary response that protects us from potential threats such as spoiled food, harmful substances or contamination, grima arises above all from an acoustic stimulus. It is not something we “see” or touch, but something that our brain interprets as particularly unpleasant.
At the moment there are no equivalent terms in German and English, but the bodily reaction that these sounds produce in people is the same.
What triggers it? And why do these screeching sounds bother us so much? For researchers, it is their acoustic frequency (between 2,000 and 5,000 Hz) that irritates our hearing, as it is similar to that of a human scream or the crying of a child, noises instinctively associated with danger.
What are the most common sounds that can cause grima
Not all people react in the same way, but among the stimuli most frequently associated with grima we find chalk on the blackboard, the noise of nails on rough surfaces, rubbing polystyrene, some metallic screeches and certain noises produced by contact between materials. The answer can vary greatly based on individual sensitivity and personal experiences.
This particular sensitivity is therefore not a hearing “defect”, but the result of an extremely refined perceptive system, capable of quickly identifying potentially important sounds. Grima is a curious example of how our brain transforms a simple acoustic stimulus into a real emotional experience.
Grima, misophonia and sound chills: are they the same thing?
Grima is often confused with misophonia, but they are not identical phenomena. Misophonia concerns a strong negative emotional reaction towards specific sounds, often linked to everyday actions (such as chewing or breathing), while grima mainly concerns harsh or harsh sounds that provoke an immediate physical response.
