Scare
Fear is an unpleasant subjective emotional state arising in response to perceived dangers or threats and which, when experienced, is typically associated with physiological and psychological changes. These changes frequently lead to behavioral reactions such as fight-or-flight responses or, in extreme cases, immobilization (freeze response). Unlike most (perhaps all) other animals, humans can experience fear in response to a present or anticipated stimulus and to imagined events.
Most internalizing psychopathologies (depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and so forth) are associated with and maintained by dysfunctional, anxious, or fearful feelings and thoughts. Phobias, or exaggerated and often disabling fears, are usually similarly dysfunctional.
Fear is often framed as a distinct product of evolution. This hypothesis, however, is becoming increasingly problematic because the psychological, (neuro)physiological, and behavioral changes and features associated with fear are consistently found to be shared with other negative, highly arousing emotional states such as anger, sadness, disgust, and anxiety. A more scientifically defensible product of evolution is flexibility, or the capacity to both change bodily states and address bodily needs through various behaviors, and, later, for humans, through language too (e.g., by employing categories like "fear"). Attributing fear to nonverbal animals, whether an invertebrate or vertebrate, is equally problematic because the human observer is always imposing that label. Nonverbal animals displaying an emotion "akin to fear" are rather fundamentally exhibiting reflexive defensive behaviors—your fear may be their withdrawal, avoidance, or defensiveness. It is therefore no surprise that human fear, along with other negative emotions, is inextricably linked to culture, social context, and trait-level differences.
Thrash Melrose
- 2025-01-07T00:00:00.000000Z
Fleshed Out
- 2016-10-28T00:00:00.000000Z
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