HOW DOES FEAR WORK?

                                                                                 

Fear is an apparently simple - and yet extremely complex - concept. The most general definition of fear we can use is the emotion that arises in response to a potential threat. But exactly, what are the biological causes of fear? Where does it originate? What are its origins? What is its goal? In today’s article, we will try to answer to these questions.

First of all, in humans fear originates from a part of the brain known as amygdalae, which also manages various different emotions. When it detects something it considers a potential threat, the amygdalae starts sending to the entire brain electrical signals, informing them of the threat and stimulating the production of fear-associated hormones, such as adrenaline and dopamine, in order to make the body ready to flee from the threat.

                                                                                

While not every animal possesses an amygdalae, all of them have something similar, a part of the brain dedicated to finding and responding to threats. And this happens because fear is nothing more than a way our body uses to keep us alive: being afraid of something that could harm us, eventually leading to our death, means we will run from it in the case we met it, therefore we’ll remain alive. It’s a self-defense system we have, and a very efficient one, since thanks to it,  we have survived for millions of years.

But the amygdalae is not the only organ involved in the activation of fear, there are probably other parts of the body involved, but we still do not know enough about them. The only thing we know is that, thanks to them, even those without an amygdalae or with a malfunctioning one, we can feel fear. Everyone is afraid of something. And when the fear of something becomes too intense, it turns into a phobia, a persistent fear of something that can be incorporated into the vast anxiety disorder spectrum.

                                                                      

There are countless types of phobias, and thus of fears, since someone can be afraid of  literally anything, but all of them can be connected to eight fundamental types of fears, eight things everyone, from birth, is afraid of (with all the possible and numerous exceptions), eight fundamental aversions that are all related, that can lead to a single, dreadful thing:  death. These eight fears are:

1.       Fear of falling

2.       Fear of being incapacitated

3.       Fear of disease

4.       Fear of the unknown

5.       Fear of sudden movement

6.       Fear of isolation

7.       Fear of pain

8.       Fear of suffocation

The reason why they are the ones every other fear originates from it’s probably obvious… except for one: fear of the unknown.

We all know what to be afraid of something we don’t know means: the fear of dark or of monsters are good examples. But,  why are we afraid of exactly  those things, things that couldn’t, reasonably, do us any harm? We as humans are used to seeing  and judging things basing on our criteria, on what we are familiar with, what we know well. If we know something very well this means that we know what it can or can’t do, that we can predict its actions and behaviour, that we know in advance if it’s a threat and how we can prevent it from harming us.  But when we are dealing with something we don’t know, something abnormal, something we can’t predict the actions of, we are potentially in danger, because we don’t know if that thing is a  threat.  And this simple fact is enough to activate our amygdalae.

                                                                           

 

But something can fall in the fear-of-the-unknown category without being necessarily alien or abnormal to us. Something can just be a bit wrong  and scare us. Stephen King said that fear can manifest itself in three forms:

disgust, the natural repulsion for things that are violent, gory or repugnant, as we subconsciously think that if we interact with them we will end up like them;

terror, the sensation of distress that comes from the waiting for something terrible, that one knows will happen, will actually happen, as, in this situations,  our body is ready to respond to the threat, just waiting for it to manifest;

horror, the fear of the abnormal, of what does not follow our logic, following what we have explained above.

Usually the first is associated with disgust, the second with distress, the third with creepiness. And creepiness is the word we are interested in.

Taking objects that resemble humans and putting them in a diagram with the similarity to humans of the objects on an axis and their likability to humans themselves, we will notice that the more something is similar to us, the more we like it. However, there’s a zone in the diagram were there are all the objects that are very similar to humans, but not enough to be perfect copies. This objects are almost always perceived as creepy. This is the Uncanny Valley Effect.

                                                                  

Seeing those objects confuse our brain. Our amygdala perceives the details, the aspects of those things that are just off, wrong, and tries to warn us. But our rational self knows they can’t harm us anyway, that they are just weird. So we are not properly afraid, we just feel a sense of unease, of angst while watching them. This is the horror, the abnormality King talks about. Those things are familiar to us, and should totally be, but they are not, somehow they are weird, and this makes us feel creeped out, gives us creeps.

Remember, dear readers,  that everything can be scary enough to not make you sleep during the night. Sweet dreams and goodnight to you all.

 Yuri