Have you ever been up somewhere high, looked down, and had the urge to jump? This sudden, often unanticipated thought is known as the 'call of the void' or l'appel du vide in French, where the term was first used. This brief feeling, which tends to be entirely out of a person's character, is more widespread than you might think.
Some people feel this urge, and some do not. Most people ignore it, although not everyone does. If a person experiences this urge in a completely non-suicidal way, then there is no definitive conclusion or explanation for it. But while this feeling is usually nothing to be worried about, it certainly warrants exploration.
Explaining the High Place Phenomenon
In 2012, Jennifer Hames from Florida State University conducted the first significant investigation of this phenomenon. In the study "An Urge to Jump Affirms the Urge to Live: An Empirical Examination of the High Place Phenomenon," Hames surveyed 431 undergraduate students, asking them if they had experienced this phenomenon. She also assesses their anxiety levels, mood behaviors, symptoms of depression, and their levels of ideation.
It was found that more than half of the participants who had never had suicidal thoughts had experienced the call of the void at least once. Meanwhile, over 75% of lifetime suicide ideators, or those with suicidal thoughts or ideas, reported experiencing the urge to jump from a bridge or the window of a tall building.
For the first time, the study showcased that suicidal ideation is not exclusively linked to experiencing sudden, unanticipated thoughts that would place oneself in imminent danger. It determined a clear difference between a person imagining the possibility of jumping from a high place and wanting to act on it.
Before the study was conducted, experts hypothesized that the call of the void might be a 'misinterpreted safety signal' where those who experience it misread the encouragement from the brain to move away from danger. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of anxiety were more likely to feel the urge than those with lower self-reported levels of anxiety.
From these research findings, Hames concluded that the call of the void could be an individual's subconscious attempt to encourage a greater appreciation of what it feels like to be alive instead of wanting to lure someone to their demise. The study seems to indicate that this phenomenon could indicate that someone has a higher-than-average degree of sensitivity when experiencing and interpreting internal cues.
READ ALSO: How the Brain Creates Anxiety: Unraveling Its Role in Generating Anxious Feelings
Other Alternative Theories
Another theory regarding the call of the void comes from cognitive neuroscientist Adam Anderson from Cornell University. His explanation for this phenomenon is more along the lines of a tendency to gamble.
People take risks when the situation is bad because they want to avoid the possibly bad outcome by gambling against it. For instance, someone with a fear of heights will have the instinct to gamble against it by jumping from that high place. In other words, jumping immediately solves the fear of heights.
Other theories attempt to explain this phenomenon. According to French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the call of the void is a moment of existentialist truth about the human freedom to choose to live or die. There is the "vertigo of possibility" when humans contemplate dangerous experiments in freedom. Then, there is the purely human explanation, which suggests that the urge to sabotage ourselves is human.
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