Now that we have covered fears that are programmed into us, can we be taught fears?įear conditioning is the process of being presented with some sort of stimuli that your brain then associates with your innate fears. Some may have trained their minds to trust their ability to survive (like the example of martial arts) while others may sadly see death as an escape from pain. And lot's of old people express their feeling of being 'ready to die'. Many people put their lives before others in dangerous jobs such as being in the armed forces or being a firefighter. Losing senses (such as sight) is used by horror movies to terrify us, the scenes may be in the dark or a character may be death and cannot hear the monsters around them.Īll innate fears link back to one thing: death. Other reasons may be due to the lack of vision and the fear of unknown.
![danger text vs flowstate danger text vs flowstate](https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Uber.png)
One reason is that predators and dangerous animals would come out at night, this has caused us to be wary of the dark. Of course feeling embarrassed, or feeling left out has no effects to your health, but the reason that our brain triggers these responses, to seemingly harmful situations, is all due to our innate aversion of isolation.įear of the dark is very common, and there is a number of reasons for this. This means isolation is connected to death according to our amygdala. Isolation is also an innate fear, being isolated increases our chance of things like heart failure and our ancestors needed each other to survive. Everyday people complete dangerous tasks and activities that most are fearful of, one example would be people who participate in martial arts and fighting sports, these people are not as scared of the pain and physical damage as a normal person would be. Innate fears are not feared by everyone, this may be from experience and training of the mind. This is also why many horror movies explore sickness through parasites, global pandemics and apocalypses. For instance, most people are terrified of COVID 19 because of our innate aversion of sickness. When we experience something that is related to our innate aversions, this creates a fear. Fear is our amygdala's response to expecting something bad or experiencing something bad. The amygdala is responsible for fear, this is simply where our brain connects and remembers emotions but also assigns responses too them. Our ancestors that were 'scared' of these things survived, and the ones who weren't scared, didn't, meaning that these traits have been passed on through natural selection.
![danger text vs flowstate danger text vs flowstate](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51AlOnB5M0L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
These things that we avoid such as pain and illness threaten our survival. Over millions of years of evolution, our brains have developed innate aversions. Whether you are a fearful person or not, is there something everyone is scared of? And if so, would that make it the scariest thing? To answer this, we have to consider why we get scared and what it means to be scared. Have you ever wondered, what is the scariest thing?