Fear: 1. ‘Alert’ and ‘ paralyse’

Albeit fanciful, the success of horror films centres on generating terror in viewers. Cine-goers appreciate the vicarious thrill of being in dangerous situations, being terrorized and helpless to resist. The makers of “Phoonk2” a macabre film that released in India recently, claimed nobody could sit through a screening alone and unafraid. A reward was thus offered to anybody able to challenge the claim.

The catch: throughout the viewing at a large-screen theatre, the contestants would be hooked up to EEG machines to monitor changes of their heart rate. The differences in the readings obtained before and after viewing the film would detect fear being generated by the movie content. They would, in other words, have to remain entirely unmoved.  As it happened, those who signed up to prove their valour couldn’t control their heart rates and hence, the reward money remained unclaimed! 

I am reminded of the reliability of lie detector tests. The test administrators pick up changes from resting conditions as signs of subjective guilt. The tests however, are not infallible because they might detect signs of stress with the questioning rather than spot the specific lies they are supposed to. The same must be said about the filmmaker’s test; what it measures is not necessarily abject fear.

Heart rate is just one among the many signs. Besides all cardiac changes are not attributable to that fear syndrome, they could be from other conditions, especially stress of some kind. In normal individuals, the initial change from the resting condition is due to a general arousal in the system. The individual becomes alert; their faculties sharpened to focus on the incoming stimuli. In the theatre showing the horror movie, surround-sound acoustics and larger-than-life visuals would bombard the viewer’s senses – eyes and ears in particular. The physiological change recorded would then be an autonomic response alerting the system to the dramatic sensory input.

Certainly, people caught in threatening situations feel fear that raises their heart rates, along with other noticeable physiological responses like clammy hands, dry mouth, hoarse throat, facial expressions, staring eyes, and so on. Abject fear also causes emotional paralysis and inability to move, like a rabbit on the highway. The several signs measured together would have proved the point conclusively and should indeed have been included in the test.

In every day vocabulary, the word ‘fear’ is connoted to mean something bad, dangerous and threatening. Similarly, ‘stress’, readily associated with negativity and debilitating conditions, invokes images of things that catch people by the throat and need to be avoided. Fact is the words ‘stress’ and ‘fear’, are simply denotative, and can have both positive and negative implications. 

For example, the word ‘stress’ also means ‘to emphasize’ which can be good. To initiate awareness, any incoming sensory stimulus creates a degree of stress. The organism is alerted, to focus attention on new influences. This is eustress, good stress, or to distinguish from the other, “fear 2”. The concomitant physiological changes serve to collect and process data, and eventually to motivate action. When the incoming stimulus is positive, the degree of arousal stays low, serving to sharpen the performance faculties.

Molly Gordon explains the value of fear 2:

• Clarity and purpose
• Stepping out of comfort zone
• Capacity to respond to danger
• Moving forward powerfully

The alerting reaction enables adaptability. Normally, the physical senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, are engaged in monitoring the environment. Any novel stimulus, like an unusual sound heard, or flash seen triggers a general ‘alarm’ or systemic arousal. Immediately other physical and mental resources pitch to locate the source of the stimulus, and determine its importance, implications for individual wellbeing and possible courses of action. 

The choice and motivation to deal with the stimulus is entirely personal. In Zen meditation, for example, the exponent becomes one with the universe. Although every external change evokes an internal awareness, the reaction to it may be controlled. In Yogic meditation, the exponent withdraws attention altogether from the external surroundings, and remains unreceptive and unresponsive to the incoming stimuli.

A stimulus is negative when the possible changes in status quo it will cause are perceived harmful. The system gears up to combat the inputs and resist its influence. If it should succeed, the threat has been confronted and dealt with, and equilibrium returns. When the individual ability to cope is in doubt, the degree of arousal becomes excessive leading to distress, bad stress that can be recorded on several physiological channels, or as some postulate the difference, “fear 1”.

Gordon outlines some negative effects of fear 1:

• Panic and confusion
• Inability to move
• Magnified danger and vulnerability
• Emotional outpourings

The bad stress reaction feeds on itself to become unmanageable. The organism proceeds to exhaustion and displays obvious signs of losing equilibrium. To a large extent, the distress is psychological. Neurobiologist Joseph LeDoux points out that the emotional mind plays a large role in the response to fear. The pathway of neural processing is different in eustress and distress. In the latter, the cascading effect of the stimulus-response loop turns off the higher brain centres. The individual is unable to think clearly, becomes increasingly stereotypical and ineffective in action.

These are the clear signs of terror the genre of scary movies ‘kill’ for. To prove the point about his horror movie, the filmmaker needed to include the other physiological parameters in the test. But perhaps that was not quite the intent. The blanket attribution made to “fear” in every change of heart rate perceived in the test was useful to save the prize money. It also advertised the film, and claimed for it a rating higher than that its content might actually deserve.

References for this post:

1. Gordon Molly “Dealing With Fear and Anxiety: Principle 3 - Discern Two Types of Fear” mollygordon.com HOW TO OVERCOME FEARS AND ANXIETY. Shaboom Inc. 2003-2006 
2. “Sense of Fear” twmacademy.com The Diva Column. TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager Ltd. 
3. Sengupta Biswas, Jharna “Stress in modern times” twmacademy.com TWM Academy. Powered by The Working Manager Ltd. 
4. “Types of stress – Some Good Some Bad” stressfocus.com Stressfocus 2010. 

Next…response patterns