How the fear of the unknown helps us to live
Text: Artyom Luchko
What's worse: the fall of the ruble or a clown from a horror movie? In both cases, we are afraid, but the nature of these fears is very different. Fear is the answer to various stimuli. The feeling of emptiness in the stomach, accelerated pulse and breathing, sweaty palms, nervousness - our brain responds every time according to the programmed script. But why in the course of the evolutionary process did man not get rid of these strange sensations and what is the true nature of fear?
Imagine the situation that you are sitting at home alone in total darkness, watching a thriller, and suddenly the window opens. Of course, you will tremble with fear, and literally a moment later you will come to the realization that no one is trying to get into your house, and this is just a draft. But the body launched the main reaction to the struggle for survival.
We "learned to be afraid" as our brain evolved, and fear became for us an equally important part of our life, like breathing or digestion. This protective function helped our ancestors survive. It was the fear that made insects threatening deadly bites shun and move as carefully as possible through the twilight jungle so as not to get caught by hungry predators. At the same time, the brain of a person and less developed creatures (for example, rats) reacts to threats in a similar way, although these threats themselves are completely different in us.
Some researchers see the cause of fear in the personal experience of everyone: for example, while some people are terrified of snakes, others turn them on as pets. In other words, each individual has his own personal list of fears, but the main problem is that scientists do not have a clear physiological measure of fear (and emotions in general), so it’s not easy to study the phenomenon.
Despite the complexity of this concept, fear is just a reaction of the brain to a stressful stimulus. It also provokes the release of chemicals that cause increased heartbeat and respiration, an arbitrary contraction of muscles, as well as the “beat or run” reaction (a condition in which the body mobilizes to eliminate the threat). At the same time, a harmless spider can serve as a stimulus, an audience waiting for your speech, a knife put at your throat, and the creaking of a window opened by a gust of wind. This reaction is almost completely autonomous, and we are not aware of it until it has exhausted itself.
How fear is formed
Researchers are turning to different technologies to better understand the nature of fear. Thus, in the course of the experiments, the subjects were shown photographs of people with a frightened gaze and studied brain impulses using functional magnetic resonance imaging. As a result, it turned out that several sections play a central role in the process.
Sensor bark interprets sensory data, hypothalamus activates the "hit or run" reaction. Thalamus decides where to send incoming sensory data — everything you saw, heard, felt. The hippocampus stores and processes conscious memories, and remembers not only the content, but also the context. The amygdala plays a key role in the formation of emotions, identifies a possible threat, participates in the formation of fear and stores scary memories.
Why do we like to be afraid
Sociologist Dr. Margi Kerr believes that no one wants to get into a truly life-threatening situation, but there are those (and most of them) who enjoy a little fright. Studies show that different people have different reactions to stress. One of the major hormones released during horrific and exciting events is dopamine; and some people get more dopamine release and others less. This means that part of the population really enjoys risky and frightening situations.
To get maximum pleasure from them, an important condition is a safe environment and confidence that everything will end soon. Passing the next test with a roller coaster or skydiving, we support our self-esteem, saying to ourselves: "Yes! I did it!" - which also gives an additional positive charge. But this entertainment is not for everyone. Many would never want to tickle their nerves on purpose by the most innocuous horror film, and this usually happens because of children's psychological trauma.
Why do we fear strange things
Sometimes it seems that fear has no logical explanation at all. For example, what danger is concealed in itself by an ancient doll, a bear with a human jaw, or a harmless face image cut from a watermelon? They all scare, while not threatening, but the pictures contain a strange and mysterious, which is not so easy to explain.
Psychologist James Gere has developed a whole system, with which he tried to find out what scares us the most. It turned out that people are afraid of suffocation, terrorists, spiders, snakes, nuclear war and other things, but these sensations have nothing to do with the eerie feeling we feel, for example, when we hear rustles in the room at night or when looking at this picture.
The key thing that unites all these terrible concepts is uncertainty. Take, for example, masks or make-up of clowns - they hide the emotions and intentions of people, so even a completely neutral or “happy” mask may seem scary because of the uncertainty that it carries. She hides the real emotions of the person who donned it, and thus does not make it clear whether he is a threat to you or not.
Uncertainty, which concerns human appearance, is also associated with the phenomenon of the ominous valley. They explain the horror that zombies instil in us, vampires and other monsters from the movie and video games. Their appearance is thought out so that they resemble people, but are still different from them. The more a creature looks like a human, the more we like it (for example, we like the robot from the movie “Robot and Frank” more than Eve from WALL-E), but at some point human-like robots start to cause horror and rejection .
It is known that each culture has its own terrible monster: in South America there is a Chupacabra, in Scotland there is a Loch Ness monster, in Japan youkai, in Russia — the devil — they all have a number of common characteristics. These monsters, one way or another, defy the laws of nature: they either come from the other world (ghosts, demons, spirits), or are half human beings. This once again confirms that things that are ambivalent or violate the laws of nature are frightening. Everything that does not make sense or causes some kind of dissonance in us - cognitive or aesthetic - seems scary to us.
Researcher Francis McEndrew described some signs that make people frightening. As it turned out, this list includes the presence of greasy hair, an unusual smile, bulging eyes, long fingers, very pale skin, bags under the eyes, strange and dirty clothes, etc. Probably, signs at a certain moment make the observer think that he is not a normal person at all, but a lively corpse or cadaver. The observer does not cope with this ambiguity and feels strange. Instead of reacting in the same way as he behaves when there is a real danger, the brain finds itself in difficulty and does not understand how to react to it.
Fear and other extreme feelings make the world more vibrant, and we need them. Thanks to fears, our ancestors survived for millions of years, but now fears feed us with a thirst for life, make us feel the contrast between our own comfort zone and something unknown - the place where “magic happens,” even if it is fully explained by neurobiology and chemistry. On the other hand, all these uncomfortable and frightening situations are more pleasantly avoided in order to save nerves.
Photo: paketesama - adobe.stock.com, Eric Isselée - adobe.stock.com
Material was first published on Look At Me