Why Are You A Nail Biter?

Research has shown that 20% – 30% of adults bite or pick their nails to some degree. The reason(s) why we engage in this activity is another story.

Nail biting and picking tends to be a repetitive and long term activity that people engage in to combat stress, anxiety or boredom. They may also do it when they are feeling down, are hungry or have feelings of insecurity.

Why Do We Bite Nails?

So for many nail biters it’s a coping mechanism or a way to kill time. For some of us it is a habit that we can’t consciously even remember doing at specific times. I mean, if you look at your nails now can you specifically state when you last bit them or how many times you did so today? Or yesterday?

Greek philosopher Cleanthes was said to be a nail biter. Princess Diana was a nail biter for years and famously showed her engagement ring with a balled fist to hide her fingers in 1981. Celebrities like Tom Cruise, Eva Mendes, Britney Spears and Elijah Wood are all purported to be nail biters.

So famous people from different walks of life do it, too. The more you pay attention and more you people watch, the more you notice how prevalent it is.

Early Research

Psychologists have only just recently tried to get to the bottom of nail biting and understand why we do it. Even though humans have been doing it for probably forever, it has only been the last few decades that it has been studied to any degree.

Sigmund Freud postulated that nail biting was due to an oral fixation and that people would chew on nails and perhaps other objects like pencils to get their fix. This theory was never proven and has long since been debunked.

After that, it was theorized that nail biting fell into the same category as people who take part in self-harm activities such as plucking one’s own hair or other aspects of self harm. But for most of us who bite our nails, causing pain to ourselves isn’t the goal. In fact we know when we’ve gone too far. You know when you’ve bitten one nail and immediately realized it was going to hurt for a few days because we took too much off.

We regretted it right away. But not enough to actually stop nail biting of course. We just waited till the nail grew back enough and we started back at it.

Modern Research

Newer research has suggested that nail biters may be more likely to have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but even that isn’t proven since we don’t really have a long track record of studying the nail biting phenomenon to be sure. In this regard, the same research admitted:

Nail biting is an under-recognized problem, which may occur on a continuum ranging from mild to severe. Nail biting has received little attention in the psychiatric and dermatological literature. 

National Library of Medicine

More recent research has suggested that it’s a lot simpler than that: We bite our nails when we’re bored, under stress and feel anxiety. To wit, more recent 2006 nail biting research concluded with the following:

Nail biting in young adults occurs as a result of boredom or working on difficult problems, which may reflect a particular emotional state. It occurs least often when people are engaged in social interaction or when they are reprimanded for the behavior.

Science Direct

So the nail biting behavior was less noticeable when people were otherwise engaged and busy or when they were told off for biting their nails. Nail biting on the other hand was more prevalent during situations that resulted in them being bored or frustrated with the task they were facing.

Conclusion

Humans have been biting their nails most likely since the beginning of time but given that research on the subject is only relatively recent, we still haven’t exactly gotten to the bottom of it. We don’t actually know why each of us do it either since it could be different by person and by situation.

More recent research has however suggested that we tend to bite our nails when facing boredom, frustration or anxiety. The same research conversely suggests that our nail biting stops when we are involved in activities that are keeping us busy or when we’re told off for biting our nails. My wife and kids can certainly attest to that last point.