Fear: 2. Individual response patterns

Fear is the emotional response to person, place or thing perceived as threatening the integrity of the organism.  Fear is the  “early warning system” alerting the organism to imminent danger. Feelings of personal vulnerability switch on instinctive response patterns.

No contagious disease spreads as fast as fear does into a group. As seen amongst many animal groups in the wild, the high arousal of fear results in flight en mass. Migratory herds used to travelling long distances in search of water and grazing pastures generally stampede at the first hint of danger from predators, depending on their speed and agility to outpace or evade the threat. Responses adopted over generations of existence are activated, as they literally run for their lives. When cornered however, they can turn on the aggression, using horns and hooves to fight their way out or protect their young.

Predators are not immune to fear, but respond differently to its stimulus, generally with focused aggression.  Their running capacities are more limited; they also are incapable of taking on the thundering hooves of stampeding herds. Hence they strategize, deliberately spooking the herds into flight so that the very young, the very old or disabled that invariably fall behind are separated from the rest, and attacked.

Fear thus generally stimulates two types of reactive behaviour – flight or fight. Human beings have also inherited these mechanisms of self-preservation. The emotional mind is tuned to understanding whole body movements, gestures and facial expressions. Time is not lost in questioning motives or assessing alternatives, as individuals or in groups. As in other animals, the responses made are instinctive, animalistic behaviour inherited over ages of species learning. There is an unquestioned following of what others are doing, whether it is running away with the crowd or indulging in mob violence.

Fear often influences our choices, activating the unthinking routes of reactive behaviour whereby unprocessed ‘gut feelings’ are acted upon. The instinctive behaviour can, however, be overridden by conscious critical thought. The biological difference that put human beings at the top of the evolutionary tree is the mental capacity of information processing. Emotions and feelings generated unconsciously may be examined, analyzed and evaluated against the present circumstances. The awareness of duty and training, for example, enables fire fighters to rush into burning buildings despite the obvious dangers to the self.

Organized societies have drastically changed the surrounding environments. Human beings are no longer at the mercy of natural forces and predators of the wild as in the remote past. With proliferations of building structures causing natural forests to shrink, survival now is predominantly psychological in the city concrete jungles. Threats are perceived in terms of interpersonal relationships, financial stability and target achievements at work.

Technological advancements have far outpaced human evolution. Unpredictable global change tests their adaptability. Stress is on the rise, with information overload, time pressures and ultimately, poor decision-making. Fear occupies the mind – fear of spaces, fear of public speaking, fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of losing out, so on and so forth to fear of fear itself. Eventually, the paralyzing effects of unprocessed fear leads to unthinking behaviour, reactive, instinctive and animalistic. 

Fear in extreme becomes a phobia, whereby the individual is reduced to a blue funk at sight or sound of the stressor. This conditioned response was seen in the classic experiments with “Little Albert”, an infant about eight months old:

Watson wanted to determine if a loud sound would cause a fear response in the child.  He was placed in a room and an experimenter stood behind him and made a loud noise by striking a hammer on a steel bar.  The first time this was done, Albert startled and raised his hands up.  The second time, he began to tremble, and on the third time he was crying and having a fit. 

A couple of months later, psychologist JB Watson experimented with conditioning an emotional response in the child:

He was first presented with a white rat.  When he reached out to touch it, the bar was struck.  The child fell forward, but did not cry.  He reached for the animal again, and the noise was made a second time.  This time little Albert cried.   One week later, he was presented with the rat again.  This time he did not reach for it immediately.  Instead, the rat was placed closer to him.  Then he slowly reached for it, but snatched his hand away before making contact with it.  The rat was presented again and Albert cried at the sight of the rat alone.

Eventually the child’s fearful response extended to all things furry!

Fear is a survival tool that is meant to alert the organism to novel or unexpected influences. However, with emotional conditioning even normally reasonable individuals may become overwhelmed, and triggered by a stressor, behave like deer caught in the headlights. The initial unpleasant experience that caused the conditioning may be forgotten, yet the irrational behavioural responses persist.

To deal with the fear, the source of the sense of vulnerability needs to be realized to enable the person to desensitize to its implications. Unprocessed fears push the making of instinctive choices that tend to be regretted later. The use of reason enables the individual to put feelings and emotions in perspective, and appropriately utilize the energies generated. Else, in the words of Louis E Boone:

The saddest summary of life contains 3 descriptions – could have, might have, should have…

References for this post:

1. Sengupta Biswas, Jharna “Group Contagion” twmacademy.com TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager Ltd. 
2. “Sense of Fear” twmacademy.com The Diva column. TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager Ltd. 
3. “Little Albert” sbc.

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