The Psychology of Tattoos

Do you have a tattoo? If so, you probably have an interesting story to go with it, or some personal insight into just what the design and the experience mean to you. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian discuss the science of tattoos and the psychology behind why we get them and how the world sees us afterwards.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:46):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuffworks dot com. Hey,
welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Saga. Hey, Robert, I remember
when you first told me that you had a tattoo.
It was when I first started the show. Uh. We

(01:07):
did an episode on stigmata, and I remember we were
about halfway through the episode. Listeners who have listened that
far back me remember this as well, and you just
kind of casually dropped like, oh, yeah, I've got this
tattoo that stigmata related, and I thought you might be
joking with me, but I just kept going and then
later on I found out it was true. It's true. Yeah,
I do have a tattoo that is um. It's it's

(01:29):
kind of an abstract thing, so it's it's definitely inspired
by stigmatic imagery, you know, regarding the spear wound of Christ,
especially in classic paintings. But it's also kind of shape,
kind of resembles an i'd has some yawnic symbolism to it.
So I in getting it, I wanted something that speaks

(01:49):
about who I am and where I came from and
you know, and and it kind of serves as um,
a hyper sigle, you know, to to to to wear
on my body and within my body. Uh. And it's
it's one that I've had an artist. I had, I
like some ideas, and I gave the ideas to an
artist and he came up with a few different sketches.
Then I picked one and then I said that's the one,

(02:11):
and then you know, waited until it was at the
right time. And I had that extra, you know, hundreds
or so bucks kicking around my my bank account to
spend on it. Wow, what how old were you when
you got it? Oh? I was. I might have been
in my early thirties or early twenties at the time. Yeah,
so it took a while. It was. I put a

(02:31):
lot of thought into it, thinking I'll probably only ever
get one tattoo, and I wanted to be the exact
right tattoo. How about yourself? Though, I have no tattoos,
and that's always surprising to people, but especially because you know,
I came from a punk metal subculture. I played music
in that, and there's obviously a lot of ink flowing

(02:53):
over there. Almost all of my friends have got tattoos
of some kind. My mom even tried to me to
get a tattoo with her when I was sixteen years old.
My mom is one of these people who she's like
an aging hippie now, but like when I was like
fourteen years old, she pierced her nose on her own,

(03:14):
like she's that kind of person. She was like, Oh,
I'm going to have a nose ring now, and like,
I just I think maybe that's probably part of it
is you know, the like whole idea of the rebelling
against authority figures, Like my authority figure was constantly like,
let's get tattoos, let's pierce my nose, and it just
never so for you was kind of an active rebellion
to not to do it was for a while. Yeah,

(03:36):
I think there's other reasons now. And as we were
doing research for this episode, I felt like it sort
of helped codify for me why I why I don't
have tattoos. Um. And the thing is is, while I
don't have any myself, I feel more comfortable around people
who have them, you know, like like the subcultures that
tend to have tattoos, like, for instance, like music subcultures

(03:59):
or or um, my wife takes part in roller derby,
so if I go to a roller Derby match, you know,
everybody's got tattoos there, I just feel more at home.
It's I think it's just maybe like they feel like
they're my people because that's who I kind of grew
up around. Maybe, But uh, I also have something to
add to this. I had a professor who was kind

(04:20):
of a mentor of mine when I was an undergraduate,
and he said multiple times to classes that he considered
tattoos as the first step toward fascism. Uh. And he
would never unpack that. If people asked him to, he
would basically say, you need to figure it out for yourself. Uh.
And it's important to remember this guy. His mentor was

(04:43):
Hannah Arrant, who's pretty famous. A lot of people know
who she is, but she's a person who coined the
term the banality of evil. She escaped from Europe during
the Holocaust. So I think that was influential on him
in terms of tattoos, thinking about the tattooing of people
going to concentration camps. Yeah, well as well as well
to us in this episode. There are certain tattooed traditions
where you see the use of penal tattoos, uh, tattoos

(05:06):
that are supposed to serve as a form of punishment
or as a mark to let other people know what
you're about. But basically it comes down to that kind
of communication. And all communication, can you know, can take
various forms. It canna be positive or negative or relatively mundane.
And I think I think the beauty of tattoo traditions
when they're when they're utilized, you know, for the positive

(05:28):
and they're not used as a form of punishment or subjugation.
Is that it does allow us to better control the
the outward communication that we're engaging with with other humans. Yeah, absolutely,
And I have notes about this later on in the episode,
but I consider it to be a form of nonverbal
communication that we have just sort of really taken control over.

(05:51):
We'll get into that later, but back to that professor,
I understand the logic of his point. I think I
don't necessarily agree with it, but I think what he
was trying to say is marking your body permanently is
a step toward a single symbol or signifier, right that
you only encapsulate maybe that one thing. And you know,

(06:12):
he was from a very different generation than ours as well,
and as we'll talk about, this is quite a generational
thing in terms of the psychology surrounding tattoos. But um so, yeah,
I think that's where he was coming from on it.
It was an interesting perspective. Well. I do sometimes think
of it in terms of, say, what if a what
if a government like the government in the Handmade's Tail
took over and then they're like, all right, we need

(06:33):
to see everybody's tattoos, so we'll know what you're about
and you can't keep your secrets from us. And uh
And in my own case, I know, I guess I
would just have to just really double down on the
Christians we have and be like, no, it's just it's
just a spear one, nothing else to it. Can I
put my shirt back on? But other people wouldn't be,
you know, so lucky. They would have to explain their

(06:54):
you know, their their Danzig skull skull on their their shoulders.
I have friends who got tatto two's when they're real
young and then regretted it and later on ended up
getting either tattoo removal like with lasers, or getting like
blackout tattoos where they would just cover there the tattoos
that they didn't like they regretted having with just like

(07:15):
blocks of black, which actually looks kind of cool. Yeah,
and you do see some cool examples two of people
covering up a tattoo that's either or augmenting in a
in a way. You know, if it's a dated tattoo
or tattoo that they just don't connect with anymore. So
where it is, you know, it's sustained damage over time,
so there are a number of different ways one might
address it. Yeah, So today's episode, if you haven't guessed already,

(07:39):
we're gonna talk mainly about the psychology of tattoos. There's
a previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind that
Julie and Robert did together that was about the science,
so we will we will tap on that, but we're
not going to go as deep as I believe you
guys did in that episode. Yeah. Likewise, there is a
companion episode of that that we did about the future
of tattoos that gets into all of these you know,

(07:59):
crazy glowing tattoos and whatnot, and so we're not going
to touch on a lot of that. This episode is
gonna really we're gonna look a little bit of the
basic science of because I think that's important, but it's
gonna focus more on the psychology of it, so the
mindset of the the the individual with the tattoo, and
then those who gaze upon our tattoos. Yeah. So, if

(08:20):
you are looking for something about tattoos that we didn't
cover here, go to stuff works dot com and and
just type tattoos into it, and you're gonna find just
hundreds of pieces of information that are both in audio
and text format. I mean there's there's literally I think
over a hundred pieces. And likewise, as we go through this,
I know that individuals out there with tattoos and tattoos,

(08:43):
stories and deep thoughts on their choices and tattoos. You
may want to share your stories and or images of
those tattoos with us, and uh, just stick around. At
the end of the show, we'll tell you how to
get in touch with us. A great way to do
that would be either email us or to go onto
the Facebook group the discussion module for the stuff to
blow your mind if you want to share it not

(09:04):
only with us, but also with other listeners. Yeah. Absolutely,
there's a great community going on there all right. So
when did tattoos start? Like, when did people start doing
this to themselves? Oh? Man, this is one of those
those questions. Whether the answer is just lost ultimately in
the mists of history. You can only assume as soon
as individuals were uh, you know, learned that they could

(09:26):
augment their bodies, that they could you know, it probably
began with accidental scratches and uh and mutilations and scars
forming and then realizing that sometimes pigment could wind up
in there, and uh, eventually the the the earliest tattoo
rituals began to emerge. Yeah, the earliest example we have
is this guy who's referred to as the Iceman Mummy

(09:47):
that was found in the Alps, and he had tattoos
and as far as we can tell, he lived around
three thousand, three hundred BCS, so that's pretty far back. Yeah,
that we're talking years older. So also known as Ootsi
the Iceman. I wonder who got to name him. Well,
we looked it up real quick and it's it's referring
to the region in which the body was found. It's

(10:09):
a region of the Alps near the Austrian Italian border. Now,
tattooing traditions they pop up just about everywhere in human culture,
from degrading penal tattooed traditions in China and late antiquity Europe,
the Mediterranean uh proud aesthetic tattooing traditions among the ancient Egyptians,

(10:30):
the ancient Persians, and now just about you know, anyone
with an inclination for a bit of ink, uh, can
it can at least grab you know, something off of
the chart on the wall. If they're nearest tattoo parlor
and join the club. Yeah, absolutely, and we will when
we get into the psychology of this. Uh, we're going
to talk about the difference between how people choose what

(10:50):
their tattoo is going to be too. Now I want
to have it. Just to throw in something else about
the ancient Egyptians because this is really really fascinating and
gets into some of the reasons were discussed later. But uh,
we find these presidents several female mummies dated to around
two thousand BC, exclusively female, perhaps royal cortisans, dancers, etcetera.

(11:12):
And our archaeologist Joanne Fletcher theorizes that these tattoos had
had some sort of a therapeutic purpose and they functioned
as a sort of a permanent form of protective ammulet,
kind of a magical spell that was intended to protect
the individual during pregnancy and childbirth. Oh wow, that's really interesting. Okay, huh. Well,

(11:34):
given what we know about ancient Egyptians and mummification and
how into body I guess sculpting they were, right or
just like just turning, turning the body into something other. Right,
it totally makes sense that tattoos would be a big
part of that culture and It's interesting when you think
of language and symbolism as language and symbolism as a

(11:57):
way to communicate meaning and to UH and and to
externalized meaning, and then to take that and put it
on the body and make it a part of yourself again.
I think that's an interesting process. So, if we're talking
about modern day, here's some general tattoo stats for you.
They have increased significantly in popularity in the last two decades.

(12:18):
Almost one in five people across all age groups has
a tattoo, and this is as of one in ten
people have two or more tattoos. Nearly forty of young adults,
that's people ages eighteen to twenty five have at least one,
and only fifteen percent of that age group had them

(12:38):
in nineteen nineties. So you can see that there's been
a big boom since uh, since I guess you and
I were in high school, up until present day. UH. Now,
despite this, there's still seems to be discrimination and negative
stigma toward people who have tattoos, and this subsequently leads
to lower levels of employment for them. Don't forget the

(12:59):
Book of Live Viticus has a little bit of a
role in this, and this is the passage from it.
This is a Leviticus nine, you shall not make any
gashes on your flesh for the dead, or tattoo any
marks upon you. But at the same time, there's a
long history of Christian tattooing as well. Coptic Christians have

(13:19):
marked their bodies with Christian symbols since the eighth century. Yeah,
and of course you have to point out that if
you start poking around on Leviticus, I mean, technically you
can't do anything. Yeah. Isn't that the one that like
talks about like um pig skin like you, I think
you can't play football. Yeah, it's It's definitely the part
of the Bible that always brings to mind the bit
on The Simpsons where the pastor points out to ned

(13:41):
Flanders that technically we can't do anything. But here's the thing.
In Western culture tattoos, you know, honestly, they were originally
associated with criminals and the sexually promiscuous, but other recent
studies show these are the following stereotypes that people associate
tattoos with academic struggle, broken homes, traumatic childhood, lack of

(14:05):
church in their life, poor decision making skills, and the
susceptibility to peer pressure. But you have to ask yourself.
With this rising popularity, is this changing? And I don't
mean is are these people changing from being those types
of people to being other types of people? I mean
the stigma. Is the stigma changing? Are people realizing that

(14:27):
that stigma is unfair? I think? And I can totally
understand why. If you're listening right now and you have
a tattoo, you're probably thinking this is really it's really unfair.
But remember, human nonverbal communication is heavily built around appearance
and the artifacts that we own and where, and these
can alter judgment and interpretations, and these even lead to

(14:50):
how much money people can earn. And here's a simple example, right,
think to how much time people spend agonizing over what
their online a tar is going to be, right like,
what what? What is going to be that representation to
people who may not ever even meet me in real life.
It's not necessarily the best or the most logical practice,

(15:11):
but it is inherently how human animals operate. It's how
we communicate with each other on like a kind of
primal basis. So all right, Despite that, the market for
tattoo consumption has largely been seen as bikers prisoners, gang members,
and other marginalized members of the working class. But now

(15:32):
with this boom, it's also being seen as something that
belongs to middle class artists or professionals. And I would
also throw in, like, you know, high level movie actors
as well. I mean, how how many actors can you
think of now that have at times a ridiculous amount
of tattoos on their body that have to be covered
of with makeup for their roles Except for the Rock

(15:55):
That guy never covers his tattoos, it seems. I think
I've seen him have them painted over here. I feel
like every character he plays has the exact same tattoos
he has in real life. I'm glad that they were
on actors and movies now, because I think that is
that is essential here. Because on one hand, yes, we
we all inevitably get engaged with individuals in our life
that have tattoos, and therefore know that just everyday folks

(16:17):
have tattoos in many cases, however, we're also consuming all
of this media and just think of the tattoos that
you experience on television and in films, and how many
of those individuals end up falling into these categories, Like
how many tattooed gang members. Have you encountered on TV?
How many like tattooed bikers or stripper characters, or you know,

(16:41):
we're somehow sexually dangerous individuals. All of these stereotypes are
still very much in play in our media, even if
we're getting better at dealing with them in our daily life.
And so you end up with, if not overt bias,
you have this implicit bias in dealing with uh with tattoos.
You know, you just encounter someone with a tattoo and

(17:03):
suddenly you're you're checking it based on something you saw
in a prison movie. Yeah. Yeah, I have a perfect
example that I think might be like a a nice
like marker point in the nineties for when the tattoo
culture started to become more prominent and acceptable. I know
you haven't watched The X Files a lot, but you
might know about this one. There's an episode where Scully

(17:24):
gets a tattoo and uh it, but she gets ergot
poisoning from the tattoo. We have we have an episode
about about right, Yeah, and so the tattoo artist for
some reason is mixing or got into the ink, and
the people who get tattoos from this person subsequently hallucinate
and start doing crazy things. She is among them. Uh

(17:47):
but you know, if you've seen the show before, Scully
is like the consummate professional, very white collar FBI agent.
She comes from a good family, she's very Christian, right,
But there's like a point in that series where she decides,
you know, I need to I need to get a tattoo.
She gets an herborous tattoo, I believe, and there's even
some implication show that her tattoo somehow means that she's immortal.

(18:10):
If you're a real hardcore X Files fan, you'll know
what I'm talking about. Where does she get it? Out
of curiosity? It's like, if I remember correctly, it's like
a real like dingy tattoo show. It's like a stigma. Yeah.
I think it's like a Russian tattoo guy and like
the the you know this like horrible back room closet
where he does tattoos wearing her wear in her body's

(18:32):
I believe. I think it's on her back. Yeah, you know,
I think my version of this was probably watching the
Tales from the Crypt episode back in the day where
somebody gets a tattoo and it's like it's a possessed
tattoo over them, which which is a you know, a
none too subtle invoking of of tattoo stereotypes. Yeah, absolutely
that this would actually make a great trailer talk for us.

(18:55):
Maybe maybe when this episode airs, we can do a
trailer talk that week about evil tattoo of views or
something like that, because there's so many like h And
I'm just thinking about like the Ray Bradberry book of
short stories, The Illustrated Man, which is like basically the
conceit is that somebody meets a tattooed man from like
a freak show, and each one of his tattoos kind

(19:16):
of comes to life and tells one of the short stories.
It's pretty wonderful idea, and I think it's been taken.
You know. There's like, if I remember correctly, they're superheroes
who have like tattoo powers, like their tattoos come to
life or something like a giant snakell jump off their
body and to fight people for them or something. Alright, well,
let's take a quick break and when we come back,

(19:36):
we will we will breathe through how a tattoo actually
comes to life on your body, and then we'll begin
to get into a lot of this psychological content that
we've been we've been hinting at all. Right, we're back.
So how does this whole thing work? I mean, essentially,
we know, we understand there's a needle, there's ink and

(19:58):
gets pushed into your flow. It's a cut, the ink
is underneath that. Right. We actually did a brain Stuff
video episode all about the actual process and how the
machines work. Is this the one where Holly from Stuff
you missed in history class got the Star Wars stuff?
That's a different one actually, Yeah, this one's hosted by
Lauren Vogelbaum from the food Stuff podcast. But but it's

(20:19):
mainly about how the actual machines work, or what most
people refer to as tattoo guns, but tattoo artists will
tell you they prefer the term machines rather than guns. Yeah,
and obviously we didn't always have the machines. But but
whether you're dealing with a high tech tattoo machine or
you're dealing with more traditional practices, I mean, the basic

(20:40):
idea is still the same. You're taking tattoo inc and
you're pushing it up into the under the skin, into
the skin, and doing so in a way to to
form shape, symbols, et cetera. It's kind of like a
light bright but with with you know, little little bits
of ink and your skin. Yeah, okay, So, traditionally, tattoo
ink was made out of anything from soot to metal salts,

(21:04):
and as health concerns cropped up around the use of
potentially toxic substances as a pigment, natural vegetable based organic
pigments have also come into fashion. Um, And there's actually
I don't want to talk too much about futuristic tattoo ideas,
but there's a remarkable approach that's out there today that
entails gaining the carbon for black tattoos because and in

(21:26):
many cases you would get the black for the tattoos
from just burnt wood, but you can also get it
from burnt organic samples such as hair or even like
the cremains of a loved one. There's no reason you
can't take that, make it into a tattoo ink and
put it right into your body. So once you have
the ink, yeah, it's basically just as simple as injecting

(21:47):
it under the skin, spelling drawing something out as you
see fit um. You know, in the hands of a
tattoo artist. So the big question I think that a
lot of people have. The big question I have had
of the longest was well, once you get that in
the skin, well, how does it stay there? Why does
it stay there? Because we've all heard these stats about,

(22:08):
you know, the cell replacement in our bodies, and you
know how long you're seven years, you're a different person. Yeah,
and we know that over time tattoos can certainly degray.
Like I remember seeing naval tattoos on old men and
church growing up, and it was like, maybe it was
a mermaid once, maybe it was a military insignia, but
it just turns to a green glob. Yeah, exactly. I
worked with an old naval marine in a restaurant when

(22:29):
I was in high school, and he was one of
those guys. He just he had like all these old
tattoos he got from when he was you know, on ships,
but they were unrecognizable. They're just kind of like green blobs. Yeah, Okay,
So here's how they do stick around and why they
do kind of degrade after a while. Um, the body
replaces itself with a largely new set of cells every

(22:50):
seven years to ten years, and some of our most
important parts are revamped even more rapidly. Red blood cells
live for about four months, and those cells lining your
acid filled stomach, they're gonna they're gonna be lucky to
last five days. So don't never get a tattoo on
the inside of your stomach throwing it out there. Meanwhile,
the cells in your skeletal system, those are constantly regenerating.

(23:13):
But a full turn turnover there takes a full decade.
Now getting to the skin though, where they where you're
actually having the tattooing take place. Your outer layer of skin,
the epidermis has a has a pretty rough turnover as well.
It's it's the front line in the war against bodily infection,
solar radiation, razor burn uh, you know, skateboard wipeouts, you

(23:33):
name it. Uh. In this here you'll find a skin
rejuvenation takes place every two to four weeks. But when
you look at a snazzy tattoo be at you know
a mermaid or you know a tribal pattern, whatever, you're
not looking at the epidermis. You're looking through the epidermis.

(23:53):
The ink is in the dermis, which is the second
layer of the skin, and the cells of the dermis
are far more stable than the cells of the epidermist,
so the tattoo ink stays in place with minor fading
and dispersion over the course of a human lifetime. Okay,
and as an added a bit of insight into white
sticking around the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center dermatologist James B.

(24:16):
Britt and Stein pointed out in the Scientific American article
the tattoos remain in the skin as well because the
ink particles are too large to be ingested by the
white blood cells that patrol the body and carry away
foreign elements. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, huh, I wonder.
I mean obviously, like early man that was giving himself

(24:37):
a tattoo, right, like this iceman that we talked about earlier,
didn't know that, right, but they must have somehow figured
that out. Like I wonder who the poor soul was
who had to like just keep going with a needle
until it went as deep as it needed to go
and then stay there. Yeah. It's one of those things
where you just you ask so many questions about how

(24:59):
you discover it and then how you sort of, you know,
trial and error, figure out the right the ritual and
the technique. Um, It also makes you think too about
human lifespans, like in a case where we're violence or
just the realities of early life or cutting human life
span short. Then you know that the tattoo is gonna

(25:19):
stay in there, unchanged for the duration. Likewise, what would uh,
what would an individual in the future who's living, you know,
easily over a century, Uh, what kind what is tattoo
alteration going to be? Like? Then? Oh, they're gonna have
to get touch ups. We're we're getting to that now. Really.
I mean I have friends who've already gotten touch ups
and they're only in middle age. Yeah, I mean yeah,

(25:41):
because if you get them in in high school or
even earlier, uh, then you know you're gonna have to
have to do something as your body changes. All right,
So those are the basics of how it works. And
again I feel like that's essential to just sort of
nail that, get it out of the way, so we
can start talking about some additional cultural practices and then
in the psychology that's wrapped up in those practices. All right,

(26:03):
So we're gonna jump around a little bit here, but
let's like, let's throw like a grab bag of cultural
practice examples out here. Related to tattooing. Okay, well, during
the Crusades of the eleven and twelfth century, you had
warriors that had tattoos on their body the mark of
the Jerusalem Cross, so that they could ideally be given
a Christian burial if they died in battle. And this

(26:25):
is in line with really with a lot of modern
tattoo medical tattoos, which we'll get to in a bit.
You know, basically, there's information, vital information about who you
are and what should be done to your body in
the in the event of death or in the event
of of illness. It's like an idea bracelet now elsewhere

(26:46):
in the world. I mean, we'll jump around a little bit,
and we can't possibly touch every tattooing tradition, so apologies
of you know, for any of we left out here,
but tattooing has been pretty practice in Japan since at
least the fifth century BC for b two vacation from
magic to mark criminals, and certainly today, uh you know,
tattoos have an interesting place in Japanese culture because the

(27:09):
stigma of the Japanese yakuza tattoos still lingers, and we've
all seen images of like the full uh you know,
body tattooing that would traditionally take place there that has
you know, you know, images of dragons and uh, you know,
sort of violent imagery. Uh. And and so that that's
that's an area where you see probably more cultural stigma

(27:32):
as a whole towards tattoos. But even there things continue
to change. So that's one thing to keep in mind
when we talk about changing attitudes towards tattoos, that even
as acceptance grows, there's very much a topography to that
acceptance depending on where in the world we're discussing on,
what particular subcultures are in place, et cetera. This actually

(27:53):
just dawned on me. For those of you outside the
United States, you might not be aware of this, but
there are some states at least are used to be
where it's illegal to tattoo. Uh. And I guess so
I'm not originally from the South where we are right now,
but are there any states around here where it's illegal? Um?
You know, I don't know offhand, Okay, I mean I
always grew I grew up in Tennessee, yeah, and spent

(28:13):
most of my additional time in Georgia and always saw
tattoo Parlors. So it's legal in New Hampshire and it
wasn't legal in Massachusetts for a long time until like
maybe a little over a decade ago. Uh. And so
when I lived in Massachusetts, when people needed to get tattoos,
they would either drive north over the border to New
Hampshire and there was just tattooed. There were tons of

(28:34):
tattoo places right over the border, or they would go
down to Rhode Island and get tattoos. Yeah, but there's
obviously tattoo studios all over Massachusetts now since it's become legal,
But that was a thing for the recent you know history. Well, yeah,
it makes sense even in the face of legality, you
would have changing regulations depending on the state. Yeah. But
let's go back a little further than that. In Polynesia

(28:57):
in seventeen sixty nine, Captain Cook first observed that tattoos
there on the locals had a social function, and what
they did was they displayed hierarchical and genealogical information about
the owners, so what their place was within the class
of their society, but then also what their family information was,

(29:18):
who their relatives were. Uh. Here in the US, tattooing
was the practice really of mainly subcultures until the nineteen sixties. Right.
They were first seen on display and merchant seamen uh,
and then bikers seemed to be the next group that
decorated their bodies. My father in law is one of
these folks. He's a he's a biker and has lots
of tattoos that are related to riding his bike. But

(29:40):
in the late sixties, UH, tattoo studios became more prominent
and they had a focus on formal training, sterilization, and
the actual art of tattooing. Right, so you get to
two thousand. Okay, there is a study on demographics of
tattoo adopters and here's what they I found is that

(30:01):
the people who get tattoos do not differ from non
consumers of tattoos in the following areas socio economic origin,
family stability, volunteering, alcohol use, college performance, or sorority fraternity affiliation. Okay,
the only distinguishing factors that they could find were that

(30:22):
tattoo adopters tended to have a lower level of religiosity,
a higher level of tobacco use, and in fact, women
were slightly more likely to have tattoos, which surprised me.
I thought that was interesting, especially in the early two thousand's. Again, though,
here's another study in they identified two levels of tattoo symbolism.

(30:45):
This is again mainly in the West here. The first
is the act of getting a tattoo that all on
its own is a symbolic act, but the second one
is obviously the art and design choice. Right. So interestingly,
they found that design was most often chosen by popularity
rather than internal symbolism. It seemed to be motivated by

(31:08):
imitation and was caused by the desire to create a
public self that signaled likeness to others. So this is
interesting to me. This is so we mentioned this earlier, right.
This is sort of the difference between walking into a
tattoo studio and picking something off the wall or doing
what you did where you've got a very specific idea,
you've worked long and hard on the artistic project behind it,

(31:31):
and then you bring that to the tattoo artist. Yeah,
I guess yes. The difference between sort of outward view
and outward facing and inward facing. I guess mine's even
more inward facing, since it only you know, not I
don't only show it off if I'm swimming or at
the beach or something, or to Saana. But but yeah,
I guess a lot of people it's it's a matter
of saying, I really like this sports team, are I

(31:52):
really like my country, or I was a part of
this military unit, and saying and so you choose the
established emblem and make it part of your body to
to communicate that out to the world. So yeah, there's
a there's a lot of variations in in at least
American tattoo culture. Now. In two thousand four, yet another
paper identified three types of people who adopt tattoos. The

(32:16):
first are the what they refer to as the fashion
aesthetic tattoo adopters, and these are people who are usually
influenced by peer groups and fashion trends towards what their
tattoos are. Then there is a group they called the
committed but concealed tattoos. This sounds like you. They're extensively
used as symbolic representations of personal life events. And then

(32:37):
the last one is committed collectors. Now, these are people
that reject the mainstream completely and develop their tattoos as
a career. They get a lot of tattoos and they
see it as a lifelong pursuit. So this would be
like the what's his name? The the individual with the
Jigsaw pattern who I think he was on the X Files. Yeah,
I forget what that guy's name is. Yeah, um, but yes,

(33:00):
exactly what you're talking about. The man who's just tattooed
all over it was like a lizard man. Yeah, he
had like a forked tongue. Yeah. Uh. Now. In two
thousand and five, another paper identified that there are two
different types of tattoos. There are tattoos as art, but
then there are also tattoos as adornment. Now, what they

(33:20):
mean here is something that's similar to jewelry and clothes. Right,
So you don't necessarily like I put my T shirt
on this morning. It's just a brown T shirt I'm
wearing today, Right, I didn't necessarily think of it as art.
It is still artifactual communication, regardless of what I think
about it. Some people are seeing this shirt and taking
something from that that I can't really control, and identifying

(33:42):
meaning from it. So I think what they're getting around too,
is that some tattoos are less quote artistic than others
and more intended as just being symbols. Yeah, and I
guess there's you get into a lot of gray area
trying to decide. I think, so, yeah, it's tough. Now.
I like how you hit on the experience too, because
it's always the case when you if you show someone

(34:03):
a tattoo or someone or someone showing it off, generally
there there are two questions, right One it pertains to
what it means or why you got it, and then
they want to know did it hurt, what did it
feel like? Um? And uh and and so it is.
It is an experience as well as an aesthetic purely
aesthetic adornment. So I always have stories of tattoos by

(34:26):
other people since I don't have any. But I have
two really close friends who got the same tattoo uh.
And they were very into like postmodern symbology at the time,
and so they like designed this thing themselves that was
just this kind of honestly like a nonsense symbol and
it looked sort of like a maze, and they got it.
They both got it tattooed, and then they found afterwards

(34:49):
that everyone was asking them what it meant, and so
they got to the point where they got so sick
of trying to explain the complexity of this, like absurdist,
data ist tattoo to strangers. Essentially that they would just
lie and they would say, Oh, it's my friends initials
he died in a car crash. Huh. Well, you know

(35:13):
that's one way, one way to handle it, and then
it kind of becomes a different story each time you
adjusted to the social setting. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's
talk about why we get them. Let's get into some
more of the psychology. Right, So the first psychological reason
that's identified as why we choose to get tattoos is
based on your identity. That makes sense, right, So they

(35:34):
are usually personal traits that are materialistic, and they, as
we mentioned earlier, they established a group identity, such as
a fraternity you belong to, or military group that you
were in, or gang membership or even sports teams. Yeah,
and then of course there's a whole range of religious
tattoosh and some of those get into varying levels of

(35:55):
magical and protective tattoos as well. So, for instance, you
might have a crucifix on your body just because you know,
you're saying Christianity means something to you and you want
you want that part of your identity to be visible. Right. Yeah, Well, exactly.
It's sort of like, if you're putting that too in
a visible place, right, you're announcing to the world, Hey,
I am a Christian. Are you a Christian too? We

(36:17):
have something in common now. But then you don't necessarily
think that putting the cross on your body is going
to protect you, but you could like they're just varying
levels of magical thinking and religiosity that come into play. Now.
The sort of more mundane version of this, right, that
I always like to think of is you know when
you go on vacation and you're like at a beach

(36:40):
or something like that, or maybe you're at the airport
and there's those touristy shirts, right. Like, let's say you
go to Miami and you're on your way back home
and you buy a T shirt that's like a dolphin
jumping out of the waves and just says Miami with
a big exclamation point on it, right, and you wear
that out? What is that telling the world? You're telling
people I've been to Miami, right, And it's essentially in
fighting other people who have been to Miami to say, hey,

(37:03):
I've been to Miami too, what what did you like
about it? Or I've never been to Miami. What's it like? Well?
And I think that comes into play, especially with individuals
who have a lot of tattoos and have sleeves and whatnot,
because you know, when you just have one tattoo, you
just you, or even just a couple, you put a
lot of thought into that one tattoo and it has
to me to mean a lot or or just represent

(37:24):
one aspect of your life. But when you have like
a whole sleeve, like each little bit. I've seen people
sort of narrate their tattoos, and so each little one,
some of them, some of the little details might not
mean anything that much. It's just, hey, I went somewhere
with some friends and we got this to commemorate what happened. Uh.
But it becomes this, Uh, it's like the illustrated Man,
like they overall tell the story of that individual's life.

(37:46):
I had a buddy who recently got a sleeve here
in Atlanta, and he got the ig Dristill, the tree
of life from Norse mythology, done as a full sleeve,
and then he had like aspects of the tree exactly
as you described, being like manifest parts of his life
that were important to him. So it's it's a pretty
interesting one. Now. Um, in all of this, we're talking

(38:08):
about identity. And I found it summed up rather nicely
in an article title the Psychology of Tattoos was published
in San Diego Magazine is written by Michael R. Mentel, PhD.
And he pointed out the individuals with tattoos tend to
have a stronger sense of identity. Now, you know, there
are a lot of interpretations of that, and you know,
certainly identity can range from identity within a group to

(38:30):
identity outside of a group. But I think that is
an important point to drive home that identity in tattoos
or are are closely intertwined. So on a on a
very basic level, you have your identity somehow wrapped up
in this tattoo, A tattoo conserved to announce who you
are to the world. You know, and this is an
essential thing given our social species and the survival advantage

(38:52):
associated with acceptance within a group. So it sends that
message I am this, I associate with this thing, idea symbol,
our ist or ideal enough diffuse it with my body.
And you know, it's not just a band shirt that
you can take on and off. This is me. Now.
The next psychological reason why we seem to get tattoos
has to do with transformation. That's right, because in advertising,

(39:18):
one is putting the inner self or the ideal in
herself on the outside. Because normally all of those cool
ideas and loves and wonders, they're encased within you. But
but only with this normal human body to even hint
at it. But the tattoo puts puts it on the outside.
It beautifies the external with the internal. I found a

(39:38):
wonderful quote here. This is from Kirby Feral, PhD. Of
the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and she put it
this way, springing off a discussion of roaring sports mascots
and screaming skulls as totems against impermanence and death. She said,
for one thing, that devouring mall is open to swallow
more life, more food, energy, but also, as a tattoo,

(40:01):
more vital attention where social animals. It's how we're built. Remember,
the self is an event, not a thing. In the
neurochemical conditions of deep sleep, the self disappears. We rely
on social behavior attention to substantiate us and make us
feel real. Exile solitary confinement and social death punished by
starving the self for attention. You know, it's interesting. I

(40:24):
also read something by Kirby Ferrell. It seems like we
we hit upon the same source. Yeah. Uh. She wrote
for Psychology Today that tattoos modify our self esteem as
much as they modify our bodies, and she referred to
them as a prosthetic that makes up for something that
you feel to be missing or inadequate. It's sort of

(40:47):
like thinking about it as like an artificial limb. Right.
And here's another quote related to the one that you said.
She said, by putting a skull on your skin, for instance,
you and everyone who looks at you honors your control
over death. The skull insists that you are not afraid
of even your own death. If you emphasize teeth as

(41:07):
an images of wolfs, jaws, and fangs, the signal is
a threat display that should intimidate potential adversaries and pump
up you the beast's owner, turning your nervous system flight
into courage and fight. Pretty interesting. Yeah, and you know
this ties in nicely with the example I want to
bring up next for the transformative power of tattoos. So

(41:31):
one of my favorite tattoo traditions that I've I've read
about and seen footage job is UH, the so called
tattoo festival in the Buddhist temple Wat bang Fra in
central Thailand's about thirty one miles or fifty kilometers west
of Bangkok. So tattoos have a deep history and Thai culture,
but the custom declined in the early modern period with UH,

(41:53):
with the upper middle class in particular looking down on it,
but traditions remain in remained in rural areas in a
middle lower class urban youths, tattoos function in a way
that closely aligned with the Thai emphasis emphasis on protective
ambulance against the spirit world. But there are also traditional
taipe tattoos that aim to protect one against physical harm,

(42:14):
even specific injuries including stabbings or gunshots, and these are
most popular among you know, police, soldiers and of course criminals.
Among these magical tattoos, you have two types. There's gaffa
or magic spells, and these are are written in the
ancient key mirror script, and then you have representations of
creatures with mythical powers, so they might be you know,

(42:36):
existing creatures like lions, panthers or boars or eagles, or
it might be dragons or Hanuman the monkey king from
of course Hindu iconography yea. In either case, the tattoos
are administered by a traditional tattoo master, either a layperson
or a Buddhist monk. Some tattoo artists of the lay
of variety they claim to be possessed by generally it's

(42:58):
like an Indian Hindu occultist, and they enter into a
trance like state and they dawn a mask. Now back
to this tattoo festival at Wat bang Fra. The tattoo
festival sprang up in the wake of tattoo master and
monk Longfow Poem, who died in two thousand two, but
they erected a bronze statue of him in his honor.

(43:18):
So during this festival, tattooed adherents gather, sometimes in the thousands.
They pay respects to the statue and they meditate, and
then a few individuals will enter into a self induced
trance and begin to act in the manner of one
of their bestial tattoos. Yeah, so they're like manifesting their
power animal exactly. So if they have if they have

(43:39):
a tiger on there. It might be, you know, a
snarling kind of behavior. If they have Hanuman, then they
might be doing having movements that mimic the traditional dance
movements of of the Monkey King. But overall they act
as if possessed or in sourcefuled uh. And this this
happens in the morning until and it keeps going until
around nine thirty am when the monks lead a Buddhist prayer.

(44:00):
Some adherents continue to frenzy at that point until the
monks spray them down with a garden hose uh. And
then everyone disperses and something, except for those who stick
around to receive tattoos from the monks. There's a great
article about this that I read to get these details.
This is from two thousand and eight titled Spirit Possession
and Tourism at Thai Festivals Compared to Study by Eric Cohen,

(44:23):
and he pointed out that this is one of those
events where if you're a Western tourist and you show up,
you're gonna be tolerated as an interloper. But but you know,
you're not gonna be encouraged to attend um. But but
there are individuals who do seek it out. You know,
just because of the spectacle of the thing. But I

(44:43):
think the whole festival is a testament to the overt
and or implied power that we give tattoos. Not only
are the ideas images and symbols to protect your body,
but those ideas become one with the body. And uh
and and you know, maybe and maybe we become one
with the sub to the tattoo. Yeah, I think there's
something to be said transformatively about the use of tattoos

(45:05):
as a form of self control, right. Uh. And in fact,
there's a lens that you can look at tattoos as
sort of pro social, regulated acts of communication, rather than
this idea that seems so pervasive, especially in early psychology,
of that you know, people who get tattoos are just
pathologically insistent on self injury and something like that. For

(45:28):
for people who have a transformative aspect with it, tattoos
are a form of controlled coping mechanisms, right. And actually,
this is an interesting stat Women are more likely than
men to choose tattoo symbols as an expression of self
identity through uniqueness and independence. So again, so it seems
to be more than just the act of getting the

(45:48):
tattoo in this. In these cases, the transformative aspect is
choosing what the symbol reflects, right, and how that's going
to change you. Well, you know, this makes me think
of the use of tattoos to cover up or in
some cases sort of adorned scars, especially surgical scars. And
this is of course very prevalent in the case of

(46:11):
women who receives Yeah, like you see these these these
images of women who have taken that that scar, taken
the absence and transformed it into into something you know,
meaningful and symbolic. Uh. And in milder cases you also
see like a purely medical tattoo where a nipple um,
you know, or some other feature of the skin is

(46:32):
repaired with tattooing. But but I think those those transformative
moments are the most most potent. Yeah. And so the
third psychological factor that we get to here, I think
is connected to the transformative nature, and this is remembrance. Right.
So we've actually talked about this before in episodes we've
done about palam sests and anthropodermic biblio peggy. But in

(46:56):
contemporary America, the meanings of tattoos can actually be possessions
that reflect your experiences, your memories, your feelings, or your values.
It sort of looks at the body as a living
record of your life history, right, and especially like when
we're talking about people who see their tattooing as a career,

(47:16):
that their body is becoming like a permanent record of
of what's happened to them in their life. Yeah, you
see people getting the names of their children, or their
names of their loved one, their mother, you know, various
family members engraved on their body to say like, these
people are important to me and they are a part
of name. My brother in law has his last name
tattooed on his leg in Old English, and whenever you

(47:38):
ask him about it, he says that it's just so
I can remember what my last name is. But it's
obviously supposed to be you know, remembrance of family, and
the family is important to him. Um. So here's a
couple of studies that are related to the remembrance aspect.
One study from eleven used content analysis on student essays
and online blogs that were about casual tattooing adoption. What

(48:03):
they found was that the motivations manifesting through the meanings
of these tattoos are first of all, the act of
getting the tattoo. Second, the design of the tattoo image.
But then the motivation for people not to get tattoos
were actually anchored in the individual's public persona, So how
uh they felt like their self was perceived by other people,

(48:26):
but also their private persona, which really to them meant
their authentic and real self. So there's a lot of
you know, tattoos are really like creating a lot of
dissonance inside you know, your identity and cognition essentially, right,
So this is like, you know, it may seem like, oh,
this doesn't make sense for a science podcast where you

(48:46):
guys talking about tattoos, but there's a lot of stuff
going on inside our heads when we're making these decisions,
you know, now choosing one that also creates a negotiation
between these two aspects of ourselves. A sub ancial number
of the respondents that they talked to mentioned getting tattoos
in a phase of their life when they quoted wanted

(49:07):
to rebel against conformity, right. So they found that this
is usually characterized by less attention to the meaning of
the design. So for instance, you go to a tattoo
parlor and you're like, I'll get that Tasmanian devil. Uh.
You get that tattooed, and then five years later you're like, oh,
I really wish I didn't do that. Uh, it must
have been because I was rebelling or something. Right, this

(49:28):
is a common narrative that you hear. Yeah, I think
a lot a lot of tattoo parlors I've heard have
a wall of shame versus some of the in their opinions,
at least wise tattoos. Yeah. Well, it's usually to like
people who come in at three in the morning, like
completely drunk and uh. You know, I think a responsible
tattoo studio usually won't give you a tattoo in those situations.

(49:51):
But there are plenty of those stories out there, all right,
you know, with varying degrees of validity. Yeah. Absolutely So,
those though, who get their tattoos for you nique creative art,
tend to search for a feeling of pride in their
tattoo and something that if it's visible, is going to
be praised. Right. Some of them get these tattoos out
of a desire for conformity that comes from social pressure

(50:14):
or influence. Okay, I want to put a pin on that, right,
Remember I talked about my mentor at the beginning, and
his whole thing about how a tattoo is the first
step towards fascism. Well, there, I can see what he's
talking about, right, Like the idea that some people are
getting tattoos out of a desire to conform to something.
I think he saw that. I don't think he was

(50:35):
aware of all of these broad variety of psychological reasons
why people got them, but that was the one he
was honing in on their right with the conformity aspect,
him linking it to fascism. Oh yeah, but it also
comes back to just the social nature of humans and
conformity is is kind of what we do. It depends
on which group you're trying to conform. Yeah, I don't. Again,

(50:57):
I don't think I necessarily agree with him. I understand
where he's coming from. I think it's a broader, more
complicated thing than that, as is often the case. Now,
there's one more study i'd like to mention here. This
is from twiften, and they found that even though there
is independence in the choice and purchase of tattoo art,
there are usually both external and internal influences that are

(51:18):
related to whether somebody regretted acquiring a tattoo. Right now,
that's either your you know, essentially your personal identity for
your regret, or people saying to you, geez, why did
you get that Tasmanian devil? Or why did you my
favorite one? Some buddies of mine used to always joke
about this because it's a very common tattoo. You'd say, like, uh, hey, dude,

(51:40):
would you get that tattoo with a it's a skull
with like a fire for hair or something like that,
you know, like like people would go, oh, maybe I
really shouldn't have gotten that skull with fire for hair.
I don't know, but of course it depends how it's
stick fire for hair skull. But oh man, if you're
a ghostwriter fan, that's right there for you. Yeah, you know.
All right, well, let's take a one more break, and

(52:02):
when we come back, we're going to get into the
psychology of how others interpret tattoos. Uh And again, this
is gonna be uh uh an issue where it's going
to vary a lot depending on, you know, exactly what
the culture is and what the tattoo happens to be. Alright,
we're back. So now we're talking about the psychology of tattoos,

(52:25):
not from the point of view of why we get them,
but how other people tend to interpret them. There's been
a lot of research on this. Yeah, and anyone out
there with tattoos you can I'm sure you can relate.
Oh oh yeah, I bet. Now let's go back to
early psychology. I mentioned this in Passing earlier. It really
seemed to get tattooing wrong. I think it described tattooing

(52:47):
as exhibitionism and masochism, and this led many psychologists to
describe people who got tattoos as uninhibited and impulsive and
more likely to exhibit psychopaths oology. Uh. They were also
described as signs of emotional immaturity and neurotic conflicts, and
by the nineteen nineties there was an association of manliness

(53:11):
and sexuality connected to tattoos, which I thought was interesting
as well. I guess I can sort of picture that, um,
because that was right around the time when like the
people around me were starting to get tattooed. Yeah, it
gets into media representations to write like the tough biker,
the tough prisoner, or say, like the tough wrestler with
a tattoo. There were the tough athlete with a tattoo. Right, yeah,

(53:35):
So if you go way back to nineteen sixty seven, though,
there's an interesting paper by Isaenick and Isaenick. I'm assuming
they're either siblings or maybe they're married, but they proposed
an idea called stimulation theory, and the idea here is
related to extraversion and introversion of people, and the idea
that their products of our cortical arousal inside our brains

(53:58):
and essentially this in lunces our response to external stimuli. So,
for instance, if you have a high level of cortical arousal,
then you are more sensitive to external stimuli. That's me, Like,
I'm way more sensitive to external stimuli than most people.
And uh I especially like if there's if I'm in
like a big room with a lot of people being

(54:20):
loud or something like that, Like it seems to affect
me more, right in many ways, Okay, But introverts seem
to be more sensitive to stimuli and seek to avoid it.
So seems like I'm an introvert in n Though another
study came along, this is Copes and Forsyth, and they
tried to determine whether the extra version levels of people

(54:43):
with tattoos lent support to the idea of stimulation theory. Okay,
so how how much cortical stimulation or arousal you were
actually getting was related to your basically the amount of
tattoos that you were getting, And they found that yes,
actually the more tattoos that somebody gets, the higher their

(55:04):
level of extra version. So they tend to be extroverts
who are these sort of like careerst tattoo uh consumers. Now,
research does show that there are personality differences between those
who are tattooed and those who are not, but there
are a few studies that investigate whether these show positive

(55:25):
indicators for people with tattoos. So, for instance, extroverts, however,
they have lower levels of cortical arousal. They tend to
seek external stimuli through social arousal. So one way to
do that would be to get tattoos. It's an instant
conversation starter, right exactly. Yeah, if you're the type of
person who loves talking to the clerk at the grocery
store when you're in line, get a tattoo, write easy

(55:48):
way to start a conversation. Me I go immediately to
the robot area and just want to swipe my goods
through there and get out of the store. The research, however,
seems to be a little mixed about whether there's negative
stereotypes that are associated with tattoos and whether those negative
stereotypes are accurate. So in two thousand and seven, there

(56:09):
was a German study that found that those with tattoos
scored higher on a scale of extraversion, but lower on
a scale of neuroticism. So this seems to dispel the
myth of neuroticism being associated with tattoos. Another twenty twelve study,
this was done in Austria and Germany, concluded that those
with tattoos have a higher level of need for the

(56:32):
following things uniqueness, sensation seeking, and thrill and adventure seeking.
But it also found that these people have lower levels
of self esteem, they attend religious services less, and are
generally less educated than individuals who don't have tattoos. So
that seems to feed into that stereotype. But let's keep

(56:56):
in mind this is like a small study in one
country in Europe. It's not I don't think this necessarily
encapsulates the entire broad tattoo And of course, just going
through that list, you can think of any number of
exceptions I think in people's lives. Yeah, absolutely so. Studies
like this one and another one I'm about to talk about,
they tend to look at three of what are referred

(57:17):
to as the Big five personality dimensions that are the
best predictors of successful job performance. And this relates to
the whole idea of like that there is discrimination against
people with tattoos when you're going through the hiring process.
These indicators are neuroticism, extra version, and conscientiousness. This this

(57:42):
strikes me as very bizarre just from my my subjective
point of view, because every job I've ever had, I
don't I can't imagine that tattoos have been like a
topic that has like dispelled somebody from getting a job
at those places. But also, I'm a creative person. I
tell to work in creative places like this one, and
you know most people who work here have tattoos. Yeah. Well,

(58:07):
you know, I think back at my own work experience
and say, so, I was in journalism for a while,
and and especially when you're doing with small town newspapers, Yeah,
I can definitely see it being a factor. Yeah, they
wouldn't want you to have like a skull tattoo tattooed
over your face if you're going out to like interview
the local sheriff. Well, I remember a guy interviewing for
the the head editor position of this paper that I

(58:29):
worked for, and he had a tattoo of an eyeball
ring on his finger. Well, I mean that's all that
we could see. But it was never you know, discussed.
There were some other things that came up that I
think disqualified him from the position. But I know that
when people saw that tattoo, they were already thinking, like,
this guy is gonna be the face of the company
dealing with people. Everybody's going to see that eyeball tattoo, Like,

(58:54):
what is what does that mean for this small town newspaper. Um.
And I'm not saying that's that's right, but well, it
gets back to what I was saying earlier that human
beings judge one another based on artifactual communication. It's just
unfortunately the way we work. Another study related to this
about the whole job thing comes from twenty sixteen, just

(59:14):
last year. It looked at the differences using those same
five personality traits, uh, those that are considered critical to
successful employees in the workforce. And the hypothesis of this
study was that people with tattoos would actually show higher
levels of conscientiousness and extra version and lower levels of neuroticism.
And what they actually found was that there weren't a

(59:36):
lot of statistical changes between the two other than a
very slight trend towards extra version. Okay, so despite all
that stuff about simulation theory and cortical arousal, you know,
some of these studies don't seem to support that. The
reading on this last study, though, was that tattooed individuals
maybe better employees than was previously believed. Right as specially

(01:00:00):
since extra virgin has been found to be a critical
indicator of people who are successful in their job performance.
So this really calls into question how those who are
judging people with tattoos about whether or not they would
be good employees, how they how they consider that, and
what they think that actually means versus what it seems

(01:00:20):
to actually say about personality traits. Plus it, we just
seem to me that if an individual has a lot
of tattoos, I mean, those things aren't cheap. Yeah, yeah,
I remember, I had a buddy. You'll like this because
you're a tool fan. I had a buddy who didn't
have a lot of money, and he spent like everything
in his bank account to get that same tattoo that

(01:00:41):
Maynard James Keenan tattoos. Yeah, he had his entire spinal
cord traced, uh, and he didn't like one go too
And it was like I remember seeing him afterwards, and
he was like like weak from the loss of blood
and like wanting to eat, you know, like a lot
of food at that time. But he was the kind

(01:01:02):
of guy who had essentially resigned himself like I'm never
gonna work in like an office setting or anything like that,
so I might as well get tattoos on my neck
or on my hands or whatever, you know. Well, of course,
the the final frontier of tattooing and the ultimate test
of the social acceptance of tattooing is probably the facial

(01:01:22):
tattoo or any near face tattoo, you know, also bringing
in neck tattoos. Yeah. Now I have two areas I
want to touch on here. But the first test to
do with probably the most famous facial tattoo custom, the
to moco of the Maori people. Uh. These were quite
prominent in pre colonial Maori culture, but there's been a
big resurgence since the nineteen nineties, but for the most part,

(01:01:45):
even tattoo accepting cultures, you know, they're not going to
be that accepting of neck and facial tattoos. Now among
the Maori, it's a rite of passage. It's it's a
lot deeper than near esthetics. Maori tattoo traditionally does not
involve the use of needles rather than already used knives
and chisels made from shark's teeth, sharpened bone or sharp stone.
And the ink two is pretty fascinating. The black was

(01:02:07):
made from burnt wood. That's where they would give their carbon.
Lighter pigments came from fungus infected caterpillars or burnt gum. Wow. Now,
men traditionally had full facial tattoos. Women had chin, lip
and nostrils. But if you had them, it was a
sign of high social rank. Again bringing in that communication

(01:02:27):
and you already you already touched on the hereditary information
that is often present in those facial tattoos. Uh. The
way it would work is the left side is generally
the father's side and the right side of the mothers.
So if only one side of the family had social rank.
You might only have a half facial tattoo. That's really interesting. Okay,
I didn't know that. So there's you know, so there's

(01:02:49):
meaning when you look at it. You know, there's information
to be imparted. People might look at a Maori tattoo
and they think, oh, it's just some fearsome face meant
to intimidate somebody. But there's a lot more to I
look to an older source on this from a two
thousand four article titled Wearing Moco Maori Facial Marking in
Today's World from the University of Waikato in New Zealand,

(01:03:12):
and they pointed out that a number of strides have
been made in acceptance of moco um among the Maori
by non Maori people, but the despite increased understanding of
the tattoos and establishment of this as a you know,
a positive cultural marking, they're still prejudice as there always was. Now.
On the extreme, the authors point out, there are those

(01:03:34):
who passed judgments on economic status and or mental health
when they see such a tattoo. With others, there's this,
you know, weird mix of acceptance and stereotyping. Here's a
particularly telling quote, uh from from a Maori with the
traditional tattoos from the article quote, I get a lot
of good response from Paquia. That's those a non Maori people.

(01:03:55):
A lot of them go to me and say, gee,
that's beautiful, well balanced, and there's not too much. That's
what they're saying. Some moco you can't see the person,
you can't see the face. But with mine, you can
see my face, you can see who I am, And
I think that's see who I am. Things rather telling,
because it's kind of a misunderstanding of what the tattoo is.
We're really most tattoos are bart about you. You're communicating

(01:04:18):
who you are. It's about identity. Yeah. Now that being said,
it is important to note that a facial tattoo, I
mean it is on your face. It's on the facial
communication array that you use to communicate with other people.
If you're making eye contact with people, you're talking with
people who have this range of facial expressions and micro
expressions that you're utilizing to communicate with someone. So you

(01:04:41):
have to ask, well, to what extent does a tattoo
like that interfere or augment your just basic communication. Well,
I found a really cool study there's a two thousand
fifteen study from the University of Arizona titled evidence of
negative implicit attitudes towards invisive individuals with a tattoo near
the face. So wasn't a full blown facial tattoo, but

(01:05:01):
you know, they're looking at near facial tattoos. So the
what the way it was always established for me, even
with my friends who were getting tattoos as we were
growing up, was if you chose to get a tattoo
on or near your face, you were essentially looking at
either working outdoors for the rest of your life or
working in the back part of a restaurant. H yeah,

(01:05:22):
and I think that stigmat I always felt like that
was unfair obviously, But so that what's the research, Okay.
So what they did is that they looked into this
through a three different studies, okay, three different experiments, and
they found the test subjects tended to hold negative associations
towards people with near facial tattoos. And then it wasn't
an issue of asymmetrical tattoo interrupting visual processing, So that

(01:05:46):
was that was one concern. The idea like, oh, well,
you if you have a neck tattoo on one side
of your neck. Is that just throwing off people's just
perception of your face? And they said that that facial recognition. Yeah,
and they said that I did not seem to be
the case. Um, I wonder how that works on facial
recognition software. Uh, there there are some studies out there

(01:06:08):
about it. We didn't have time to go into it
for this episode, but there are some studies that look
at at facial recognition software and tattoos. That's important to
remember as Big Brother takes us over, we should all
get face tattoos. Now. They did find that a couple
of things did help the individual's perception and help positive
perception of near facial tattoos, either higher intelligence on the

(01:06:30):
part of the perceiver or quote low external motivation to
respond with prejudice, So these perceivers exhibited lower implicit prejudice.
It also helped if the perceiver themselves had a tattoo
and h the exact nature of that the tattoo near
the face matter. So is it tribal? Is it a
quote unquote positive image? Do you remember we talked about

(01:06:53):
this maybe a year or so ago on the show.
I think I can't remember if you've read this or
not the comic book series King's City by and Graham. No,
I haven't read that one. H He that guy Brandon
Graham has a tattoo of an elephant on his neck.
That's pretty prominent. But so I I would think in
this situation, like the elephant is a fairly non threatening
kind of you know, thing that doesn't seem to necessarily

(01:07:15):
represent any kind of violent or aggressive identity, right, Yeah,
Like that would be an example of a positive or
at least a mundane tattoo. Likewise, a heart or you know,
the name of someone's child like that would I feel
like that would also be a positive or mundane use. However,
it's a tattoo of, say, you know, like a dagger

(01:07:37):
cutting your throat or was it Richard Rowntree that supposedly
had one that was a dotted line and it said
cut on the dotted line? Is that right? I've never
heard that. I believe that is the case. But if
that's still with fire for hair, right, those kind of
tattoos would be more likely to be perceived as as
negative by the individual. And then you have all these
issues of masculinity and femininity as well, which we touched

(01:08:00):
on as well, so again you can't just look at
it in complete isolation. But even still, the negative trends
persisted in the experiments, perhaps due in large part two
negative portrayals of individuals with facial tattoos or near facial
tattoos in media, even if you yourself have a number
of tattoos. But I I want to say this is
related to the episode we did a couple of years

(01:08:22):
ago about Halloween and in clothes cognition. I want to
say that Halloween costumes of like being a criminal or
a prisoner come with like fake tattoos for your face. Yeah,
I seem to remember that. Yeah, that that sounds right.
You know, I think there are there are other examples
to where they'll be like ninja costumes to come with
a dragon tattoo. But um, yeah, I mean it's certainly

(01:08:47):
when you're get to dealing with Halloween costumes, you're dealing
with in clothed cognition. You're you're you're changing the way
you think about yourself and how others will interpret you
with the way that you're dressed. And uh, and tattoos
are in a large part in another version of if
you're interested in that episode and Halloween's coming up, So
you go back into our archives at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com you can find that one. Yeah,

(01:09:08):
and I'll try to link to it on the landing
page for this episode's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot
com as well. So we would love to hear from
our listeners who have tattoos, and I'm sure many of
you have strong opinions about the research we just presented. Uh,
you know, do you agree with what it says about
why people get tattoos? Do you agree with what it
says about how people interpret tattoos? Let us know. You

(01:09:31):
can get in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
and Instagram. That's right, and again that discussion module group
on Facebook. That's a great way if you want to
share your tattoo and your tattoo story with other listeners
and UH and your host here. But if you want
to get in touch with us directly, you shoot us
an email and blow the mind and how stuff Works

(01:09:52):
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com