Fear is an emotional state which is aroused by threatening situations. It is usually considered to be a negative, unpleasant emotion. The feeling of fear can result directly from certain kinds of sensory stimulation, such as sounds which resemble screaming. Fear can also be evoked by the anticipation that undesirable events will, or may, occur, and is useful in providing motivation to avoid or mitigate risks. It may also be the result of imagining threats to oneself or others, whether or not those threats are real or possible.
Fear is associated with a number of physiological states. In humans, fear is correlated with more rapid breathing and heart rate, dilation of the pupils, spikes in cortisol levels, and elevated electrodermal activity. These changes overlap considerably with the physiology of anger, sadness, disgust, anxiety, and other negative, arousing emotions. Fear is also associated with behavioural reactions like the startle response, the fight-or-flight response, and the freeze response.
The physiological and behavioural effects of fear are not unique to humans, and have routinely been used to identify fear in both non-human vertebrates and invertebrates. However, understanding the experience of fear in other animals is rendered difficult by the inability of non-humans to communicate their experiences in language. Contemporary neuroscientific research into the brains of vertebrates suggests a view in which neural structures associated with fear are fully integrated into the non-hierarchical, dynamic cognitive systems which allow animals, both human and non-human, to flexibly respond to complex situations.
The subjective experience of fear, including the distinction between fear and other emotions, is heavily affected by individual differences, situational factors, and cultural ways of thinking. Assuming that fear only refers to a single distinct phenomenon can therefore be unhelpful and inaccurate. Fear may be experienced as pleasurable and is intentionally evoked by certain forms of leisure: it is often a component of thrilling or adventurous experiences, and is crucial to forms of popular media like horror films. Maladaptive levels of fear are closely associated with a number of mental disorders, including specific phobias and internalizing psychopathologies like depression, anxiety, and suicidality.
Causes An influential categorization of stimuli causing fear was proposed by psychologist Jeffrey Alan Gray; namely, intensity, novelty, special evolutionary dangers, stimuli arising during social interaction, and conditioned stimuli. Another categorization was proposed by Archer, who, besides conditioned fear stimuli, categorized fear-evoking (as well as aggression-evoking) stimuli into three groups; namely, pain, novelty, and frustration, although he also described "looming", which refers to an object rapidly moving towards the visual sensors of a subject, and can be categorized as "intensity". Russell described a more functional categorization of fear-evoking stimuli, in which for instance novelty is a variable affecting more than one category: 1) Predator stimuli (including movement, suddenness, proximity, but also learned and innate predator stimuli); 2) Physical environmental dangers (including intensity and heights); 3) Stimuli associated with increased risk of predation and other dangers (including novelty, openness, illumination, and being alone); 4) Stimuli stemming from conspecifics (including novelty, movement, and spacing behavior); 5) Species-predictable fear stimuli and experience (special evolutionary dangers); and 6) Fear stimuli that are not species predictable (conditioned fear stimuli).
Nature Although many fears are learned, the capacity to fear is part of human nature. Many studies have found that certain fears (e.g., animals, heights) are much more common than others (e.g., flowers, clouds). 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 (acrophobia), 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 (the still-ongoing geological era encompassing the last 66 million of history). 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 became important carriers of infectious diseases and harmful for crops and stored foods).
Conditioning
Nonhuman animals and humans innovate specific fears as a result of learning. This has been studied in psychology as fear conditioning, beginning with John B. Watson's Little Albert experiment in 1920, which was inspired after observing a child with an irrational fear of dogs. In this study, an 11-month-old boy was conditioned to fear a white rat in the laboratory. The fear became generalized to include other white, furry objects, such as a rabbit, dog, and even a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls in the beard.
Fear can be learned by experiencing or watching a frightening traumatic accident. For example, a child falling into a well and struggling to get out may develop a fear of wells, heights (acrophobia), enclosed spaces (claustrophobia), or water (aquaphobia). There are studies looking at areas of the brain that are affected in relation to fear. 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. This suggests that fear can develop in both conditions, not just simply from personal history.
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. There are consistent cross-cultural differences in how people respond to fear. Display rules affect how likely people are to express the facial expression of fear and other emotions.
Fear of victimization is a function of perceived risk and seriousness of potential harm.
Common triggers Phobias
According to surveys, some of the most common fears are of demons and ghosts, the existence of evil powers, cockroaches, spiders, snakes, heights, water, enclosed spaces, tunnels, bridges, needles, social rejection, failure, examinations, and public speaking.
Regionally some may more so fear terrorist attacks, death, war, criminal or gang violence, being alone, the future, nuclear war,Gallup Poll: What Frightens America's Youth , gallup.com (29 March 2005). flying, clowns, intimacy, people, labels, and driving.
Uncertainty
Fear of the unknown or irrational fear is caused by negative thinking (worry) which arises from anxiety accompanied by 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. Such fear can create comorbidity with the umbrella. Being scared may cause people to experience anticipatory fear of what may lie ahead rather than planning and evaluating for the same. For example, "continuation of scholarly education" is perceived by many educators as a risk that may cause them fear and stress, and they would rather teach things they've been taught than go and do research.
The ambiguity of situations that tend to be uncertain and unpredictable can cause anxiety in addition to other psychological and physical problems in some populations; especially those who engage it constantly, for example, in war-ridden places or in places of conflict, terrorism, abuse, etc. Poor parenting that instills fear can also debilitate a child's 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. Ambiguous and mixed messages like this can affect their self-esteem and self-confidence. Researchers say talking to strangers is not something to be thwarted but allowed in a parent's presence if required. Developing a sense of equanimity to handle various situations is often advocated as an antidote to irrational fear and as an essential skill by a number of ancient philosophies.
Fear of the unknown (FOTU) "may be a, or possibly the, fundamental fear" from early times when there were many threats to life.
Behavior Animals experiencing fear may undergo a variety of changes in behaviour, depending on their species and context. One influential categorization divides responses based around immobility from responses based around avoidance. Immobility responses includes the freeze response, in which an animal becomes motionless but remains alert and capable of movement, as well as tonic immobility or "playing dead," whereby an animal becomes temporarily paralyzed and unresponsive. Although these responses do not act to remove an animal from a threatening situation, they serve to increase the probability of survival. Avoidance responses notably include the widely-observed fight-or-flight response, which promotes fleeing from a threatening situation when escape is possible and responding with aggression when escape is impossible. Certain defensive reactions function by producing swift, automatic responses to threatening stimuli, such as the startle response to unexpected sounds or movements and the looming response to approaching objects. Threat display is a fear response by which an animal attempts to frighten or startle a threatening animal by feigning to have defensive capacities that they do not actually possess. Defensive burying is an instinctive fear response common in rodents in which material on the ground is displaced with the extremities and then shovelled at a noxious stimulus in order to bury it. Other responses to fear are social, including vocalizing alarm to alert nearby animals and displaying submission to the threatening animal.
The type of fear behaviour exhibited by an animal can be determined both by the intensity of their fear and by a variety of circumstantial factors. Environmental characteristics, such as the presence of an escape route and how distant the animal is from a known refuge, can affect fear responses. Responses are likewise affected by whether the perceived threat can be discretely located and, if so, how distant it is, its size, its speed, how directly it is approaching, and whether the animal has experienced this type of threat before. Other determinants of fear behaviour derive from the condition of the animal who is afraid, including their own size, their speed while in movement, their physical condition, their ability to defend themselves or to avoid detection, and their social situation.