When looking at these areas such as the amygdala , it was proposed that a person learns to fear regardless of whether they themselves have experienced trauma, or if they have observed the fear in others. In a study completed by Andreas Olsson, Katherine I. Nearing and Elizabeth A. Phelps, the amygdala were affected both when subjects observed someone else being submitted to an aversive event, knowing that the same treatment awaited themselves, and when subjects were subsequently placed in a fear-provoking situation.
Fear is affected by cultural and historical context. For example, in the early 20th century, many Americans feared polio , a disease that can lead to paralysis. Although many fears are learned, the capacity to fear is part of human nature.
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Many studies [ citation needed ] have found that certain fears e. These fears are also easier to induce in the laboratory. This phenomenon is known as preparedness. Because early humans that were quick to fear dangerous situations were more likely to survive and reproduce, preparedness is theorized to be a genetic effect that is the result of natural selection.
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, different fears may be different adaptations that have been useful in our evolutionary past. They may have developed during different time periods. Some fears, such as fear of heights, may be common to all mammals and developed during the mesozoic period.
Other fears, such as fear of snakes, may be common to all simians and developed during the cenozoic time period. Still others, such as fear of mice and insects, may be unique to humans and developed during the paleolithic and neolithic time periods when mice and insects become important carriers of infectious diseases and harmful for crops and stored foods.
Fear is high only if the observed risk and seriousness both are high, and it is low if risk or seriousness is low. In a Gallup Poll U. The question was open-ended and participants were able to say whatever they wanted. The top ten fears were, in order: In an estimate of what people fear the most, book author Bill Tancer analyzed the most frequent online queries that involved the phrase, "fear of His top ten list of fears published consisted of flying , heights , clowns , intimacy , death, rejection , people , snakes , failure, and driving.
According to surveys, some of the most common fears are of demons and ghosts , the existence of evil powers, cockroaches , spiders , snakes , heights , Trypophobia , water , enclosed spaces , tunnels , bridges , needles , social rejection , failure , examinations , and public speaking. Death anxiety is multidimensional; it covers "fears related to one's own death, the death of others, fear of the unknown after death, fear of obliteration, and fear of the dying process, which includes fear of a slow death and a painful death".
However, there is a more severe form of having a fear of death, which is known as Thanatophobia, which is anxiety over death that becomes debilitating or keeps a person from living their life. The Yale philosopher Shelly Kagan examined fear of death in a Yale open course [16] by examining the following questions: Is fear of death a reasonable appropriate response?
What conditions are required and what are appropriate conditions for feeling fear of death? What is meant by fear, and how much fear is appropriate? According to Kagan for fear in general to make sense, three conditions should be met:. The amount of fear should be appropriate to the size of "the bad". If the three conditions are not met, fear is an inappropriate emotion. He argues, that death does not meet the first two criteria, even if death is a "deprivation of good things" and even if one believes in a painful afterlife. Because death is certain, it also does not meet the third criterion, but he grants that the unpredictability of when one dies may be cause to a sense of fear.
In a study of women and men, aged 65—87, low self-efficacy predicted fear of the unknown after death and fear of dying for women and men better than demographics, social support, and physical health.
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In hierarchical multiple regression analysis the most potent predictors of death fears were low "spiritual health efficacy", defined as beliefs relating to one's perceived ability to generate spiritually based faith and inner strength, and low "instrumental efficacy", defined as beliefs relating to one's perceived ability to manage activities of daily living.
Psychologists have tested the hypotheses that fear of death motivates religious commitment, and that assurances about an afterlife alleviate the fear; however, empirical research on this topic has been equivocal. The survey found a negative correlation between fear of death and "religious concern". In a study of white, Christian men and women the hypothesis was tested that traditional, church-centered religiousness and de-institutionalized spiritual seeking are ways of approaching fear of death in old age.
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Both religiousness and spirituality were related to positive psychosocial functioning, but only church-centered religiousness protected subjects against the fear of death. Fear of the unknown or irrational fear is caused by negative thinking worry which arises from anxiety accompanied with a subjective sense of apprehension or dread. Irrational fear shares a common neural pathway with other fears, a pathway that engages the nervous system to mobilize bodily resources in the face of danger or threat.
Many people are scared of the "unknown". The irrational fear can branch out to many areas such as the hereafter, the next ten years or even tomorrow. Chronic irrational fear has deleterious effects since the elicitor stimulus is commonly absent or perceived from delusions. In these cases specialists use F alse E vidence A ppearing R eal as a definition, alternatively therapists use it as acronym for F eeling frightened, E xpecting bad things to happen, A ctions and attitudes that can help, and R ewards and results in Rx programs like Coping Cat.
Such fear can create comorbidity with the anxiety disorder umbrella. For example, "continuation of scholarly education" is perceived by many educators as a risk that may cause them fear and stress, [20] and they would rather teach things they've been taught than go and do research. That can lead to habits such as laziness and procrastination.
Poor parenting that instills fear can also debilitate a child's psyche development or personality. For example, parents tell their children not to talk to strangers in order to protect them. In school they would be motivated to not show fear in talking with strangers, but to be assertive and also aware of the risks and the environment in which it takes place.
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Ambiguous and mixed messages like this can affect their self-esteem and self-confidence. Researchers say talking to strangers isn't something to be thwarted but allowed in a parent's presence if required. Often laboratory studies with rats are conducted to examine the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear responses.
However the rats did show signs of avoidance learning, not fear, but simply avoiding the area that brought pain to the test rats. The avoidance learning of rats is seen as a conditioned response , and therefore the behavior can be unconditioned, as supported by the earlier research. Species-specific defense reactions SSDRs or avoidance learning in nature is the specific tendency to avoid certain threats or stimuli, it is how animals survive in the wild.
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Humans and animals both share these species-specific defense reactions, such as the flight-or-fight, which also include pseudo-aggression, fake or intimidating aggression and freeze response to threats, which is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. These SSDRs are learned very quickly through social interactions between others of the same species, other species, and interaction with the environment. The animal that survives is the animal that already knows what to fear and how to avoid this threat.
An example in humans is the reaction to the sight of a snake, many jump backwards before cognitively realizing what they are jumping away from, and in some cases it is a stick rather than a snake. As with many functions of the brain, there are various regions of the brain involved in deciphering fear in humans and other nonhuman species. The amygdala plays an important role in SSDR, such as the ventral amygdalofugal, which is essential for associative learning , and SSDRs are learned through interaction with the environment and others of the same species.
An emotional response is created only after the signals have been relayed between the different regions of the brain, and activating the sympathetic nervous systems; which controls the flight, fight, freeze, fright, and faint response. Bolles , a researcher at University of Washington, wanted to understand species-specific defense reactions and avoidance learning among animals, but found that the theories of avoidance learning and the tools that were used to measure this tendency were out of touch with the natural world.
Even domesticated animals have SSDRs, and in those moments it is seen that animals revert to atavistic standards and become "wild" again. Bolles states that responses are often dependent on the reinforcement of a safety signal, and not the aversive conditioned stimuli. This safety signal can be a source of feedback or even stimulus change. Intrinsic feedback or information coming from within, muscle twitches, increased heart rate, are seen to be more important in SSDRs than extrinsic feedback, stimuli that comes from the external environment.
Bolles found that most creatures have some intrinsic set of fears, to help assure survival of the species. Rats will run away from any shocking event, and pigeons will flap their wings harder when threatened. The wing flapping in pigeons and the scattered running of rats are considered species-specific defense reactions or behaviors. Bolles believed that SSDRs are conditioned through Pavlovian conditioning, and not operant conditioning; SSDRs arise from the association between the environmental stimuli and adverse events. Fanselow conducted an experiment, to test some specific defense reactions, he observed that rats in two different shock situations responded differently, based on instinct or defensive topography, rather than contextual information.
Species-specific defense responses are created out of fear, and are essential for survival. Humans and animals alike have created fear to know what should be avoided, and this fear can be learned through association with others in the community, or learned through personal experience with a creature, species, or situations that should be avoided. SSDRs are an evolutionary adaptation that has been seen in many species throughout the world including rats, chimpanzees , prairie dogs , and even humans , an adaptation created to help individual creatures survive in a hostile world. Fear learning changes across the lifetime due to natural developmental changes in the brain.
The brain structures that are the center of most neurobiological events associated with fear are the two amygdalae , located behind the pituitary gland. Each amygdala is part of a circuitry of fear learning. In the presence of a threatening stimulus, the amygdalae generate the secretion of hormones that influence fear and aggression. This defensive response is generally referred to in physiology as the fight-or-flight response regulated by the hypothalamus, part of the limbic system.
Some of the hormones involved during the state of fight-or-flight include epinephrine , which regulates heart rate and metabolism as well as dilating blood vessels and air passages, norepinephrine increasing heart rate, blood flow to skeletal muscles and the release of glucose from energy stores, [41] and cortisol which increases blood sugar, increases circulating neutrophilic leukocytes, calcium amongst other things. After a situation which incites fear occurs, the amygdalae and hippocampus record the event through synaptic plasticity. Experimental data supports the notion that synaptic plasticity of the neurons leading to the lateral amygdalae occurs with fear conditioning.
Pathogens can suppress amygdala activity. Rats infected with the toxoplasmosis parasite become less fearful of cats, sometimes even seeking out their urine-marked areas. This behavior often leads to them being eaten by cats. The parasite then reproduces within the body of the cat. There is evidence that the parasite concentrates itself in the amygdala of infected rats. These rats pulled on levers supplying food that sometimes sent out electrical shocks.
While they learned to avoid pressing on them, they did not distance themselves from these shock-inducing levers. Several brain structures other than the amygdalae have also been observed to be activated when individuals are presented with fearful vs. In threatening situations insects, aquatic organisms, birds, reptiles, and mammals emit odorant substances, initially called alarm substances, which are chemical signals now called alarm pheromones "Schreckstoff" in German.
This is to defend themselves and at the same time to inform members of the same species of danger and leads to observable behavior change like freezing, defensive behavior, or dispersion depending on circumstances and species. For example, stressed rats release odorant cues that cause other rats to move away from the source of the signal. After the discovery of pheromones in , alarm pheromones were first described in in ants [52] and earthworms, [53] and four years later also found in mammals, both mice and rats.
Earlier, in , a link between odors released by stressed rats and pain perception was discovered: By using the forced swimming test in rats as a model of fear-induction, the first mammalian "alarm substance" was found. In a connection between alarm chemosignals in mice and their immune response was found.
In , it was demonstrated that rats' alarm pheromones had different effects on the "recipient" rat the rat perceiving the pheromone depending which body region they were released from: Pheromone production from the face modified behavior in the recipient rat, e. It was not until that a link between severe pain, neuroinflammation and alarm pheromones release in rats was found: The neurocircuit for how rats perceive alarm pheromones was shown to be related to the hypothalamus , brainstem , and amygdalae , all of which are evolutionary ancient structures deep inside or in the case of the brainstem underneath the brain away from the cortex, and involved in the fight-or-flight response , as is the case in humans.
Alarm pheromone-induced anxiety in rats has been used to evaluate the degree to which anxiolytics can alleviate anxiety in humans. For this the change in the acoustic startle reflex of rats with alarm pheromone-induced anxiety i. Pretreatment of rats with one of five anxiolytics used in clinical medicine was able to reduce their anxiety: Faulty development of odor discrimination impairs the perception of pheromones and pheromone-related behavior, like aggressive behavior and mating in male rats: The enzyme Mitogen-activated protein kinase 7 MAPK7 has been implicated in regulating the development of the olfactory bulb and odor discrimination and it is highly expressed in developing rat brains, but absent in most regions of adult rat brains.
Conditional deletion of the MAPK7gene in mouse neural stem cells impairs several pheromone-mediated behaviors, including aggression and mating in male mice. These behavior impairments were not caused by a reduction in the level of testosterone, by physical immobility, by heightened fear or anxiety or by depression. Using mouse urine as a natural pheromone-containing solution, it has been shown that the impairment was associated with defective detection of related pheromones, and with changes in their inborn preference for pheromones related to sexual and reproductive activities.
Lastly, alleviation of an acute fear response because a friendly peer or in biological language: The term is in analogy to the "buffering" hypothesis in psychology, where social support has been proven to mitigate the negative health effects of alarm pheromone mediated distress. A bee colony exposed to an environment of high threat of predation did not show increased aggression and aggressive-like gene expression patterns in individual bees, but decreased aggression.
That the bees did not simply habituate to threats is suggested by the fact that the disturbed colonies also decreased their foraging. Biologists have proposed in that fear pheromones evolved as molecules of "keystone significance", a term coined in analogy to keystone species.
Pheromones may determine species compositions and affect rates of energy and material exchange in an ecological community. Thus pheromones generate structure in a food web and play critical roles in maintaining natural systems. Evidence of chemosensory alarm signals in humans has emerged slowly: Although alarm pheromones have not been physically isolated and their chemical structures have not been identified in humans so far, there is evidence for their presence. Androstadienone , for example, a steroidal, endogenous odorant, is a pheromone candidate found in human sweat, axillary hair and plasma.
The closely related compound androstenone is involved in communicating dominance, aggression or competition; sex hormone influences on androstenone perception in humans showed a high testosterone level related to heightened androstenone sensitivity in men, a high testosterone level related to unhappiness in response to androstenone in men, and a high estradiol level related to disliking of androstenone in women.
A German study from showed when anxiety-induced versus exercise-induced human sweat from a dozen people was pooled and offered to seven study participants, of five able to olfactorily distinguish exercise-induced sweat from room air, three could also distinguish exercise-induced sweat from anxiety induced sweat. The acoustic startle reflex response to a sound when sensing anxiety sweat was larger than when sensing exercise-induced sweat, as measured by electromyograph analysis of the orbital muscle, which is responsible for the eyeblink component.
This showed for the first time that fear chemosignals can modulate the startle reflex in humans without emotional mediation; fear chemosignals primed the recipient's "defensive behavior" prior to the subjects' conscious attention on the acoustic startle reflex level. In analogy to the social buffering of rats and honeybees in response to chemosignals, induction of empathy by "smelling anxiety" of another person has been found in humans.
A study from provided brain imaging evidence that human responses to fear chemosignals may be gender-specific. Researchers collected alarm-induced sweat and exercise-induced sweat from donors extracted it, pooled it and presented it to 16 unrelated people undergoing functional brain MRI. While stress-induced sweat from males produced a comparably strong emotional response in both females and males, stress-induced sweat from females produced a markedly stronger arousal in women than in men.
Statistical tests pinpointed this gender-specificity to the right amygdala and strongest in the superficial nuclei. Since no significant differences were found in the olfactory bulb , the response to female fear-induced signals is likely based on processing the meaning, i. An approach-avoidance task was set up where volunteers seeing either an angry or a happy cartoon face on a computer screen pushed away or pulled toward them a joystick as fast as possible.
Volunteers smelling anandrostadienone, masked with clove oil scent responded faster, especially to angry faces, than those smelling clove oil only, which was interpreted as anandrostadienone-related activation of the fear system. Androstadienone is known to influence activity of the fusiform gyrus which is relevant for face recognition. A drug treatment for fear conditioning and phobias via the amygdalae is the use of glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoid receptors were inhibited using lentiviral vectors containing Cre-recombinase injected into mice. Results showed that disruption of the glucocorticoid receptors prevented conditioned fear behavior.
The mice were subjected to auditory cues which caused them to freeze normally. However, a reduction of freezing was observed in the mice that had inhibited glucocorticoid receptors.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy has been successful in helping people overcome their fear. Because fear is more complex than just forgetting or deleting memories , an active and successful approach involves people repeatedly confronting their fears. By confronting their fears in a safe manner a person can suppress the "fear-triggering memories" or stimuli. Another psychological treatment is systematic desensitization, which is a type of behavior therapy used to completely remove the fear or produce a disgusted response to this fear and replace it.
The replacement that occurs will be relaxation and will occur through conditioning. Through conditioning treatments, muscle tensioning will lessen and deep breathing techniques will aid in de-tensioning. Other methods for treating or coping with one's fear was suggested by life coach Robin Sharma. A person could keep a journal in which they write down rational thoughts regarding their fears.
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Journal entries are a healthy method of expressing one's fears without compromising their safety or causing uncertainty. Another suggestion is a fear ladder. To create a fear ladder, one must write down all of their fears and score them on a scale of one to ten. Next, the person addresses their phobia, starting with the lowest number.
Finding solace in religion is another method to cope with one's fear. Having something to answer your questions regarding your fears, such as, what happens after death or if there is an afterlife, can help mitigate one's fear of death because there is no room for uncertainty as their questions are answered. Religion offers a method of being able to understand and make sense of one's fears rather than ignore them. The fear of the end of life and its existence is in other words the fear of death.
The fear of death ritualized the lives of our ancestors. These rituals were designed to reduce that fear; they helped collect the cultural ideas that we now have in the present. The results and methods of human existence had been changing at the same time that social formation was changing. One can say [ by whom? The result of this fear forced people to unite to fight dangers together rather than fight alone. Maas, Queen of Shadows. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions. It would be like sleep without dreams. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens.
Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. Life swarms with innocent monsters. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it. So I may roam wherever I wish until the dawn. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses. Broken people let themselves be eaten. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous.
It was always, always, always a step ahead.