I’ve talked about innate fear before but this article highlights something I talk about in my presentations and demonstrates that “negative thinking” is a natural occurrence and is vital to our survival. From LiveScience:
Fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias, yet many people have never seen a snake in person. So how is this fear generated?
New research suggests humans have evolved an innate tendency to sense snakes – and spiders, too – and to learn to fear them.
Psychologists found that both adults and children could detect images of snakes among a variety of non-threatening objects more quickly than they could pinpoint frogs, flowers or caterpillars. The researchers think this ability helped humans survive in the wild.
“The idea is that throughout evolutionary history, humans that learned quickly to fear snakes would have been at an advantage to survive and reproduce,” said Vanessa LoBue, a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Virginia. “Humans who detected the presence of snakes very quickly would have been more likely to pass on their genes.”
Previously, anthropologists have suggested the need to notice snakes in the wild may have led early primates to develop better vision and larger brains.
Fear is irrational feeling with very logical underpinnings. You can control your fear as well as use it. By understanding the reason behind the fear we can then use that information to make better decisions.
While babies and very young children do not usually fear snakes, they are unusually skilled at detecting them and show a predisposition to learn to fear snakes if they have bad experiences or even if they are exposed to negative portrayals of them in the media, the scientists found.
Spiders, too
To learn more, the psychologists showed adults and 3-year-old children images of a snake surrounded by objects of similar colors, such as frogs, caterpillars and flowers. Then they showed them pictures of a frog or a flower surrounded by snakes. Both groups were able to identify the hidden snake faster than the other hidden objects.
“We also did a study with spiders and found the same effect,” LoBue said. Although the team has not tested other phobias, they don’t think these predispositions would necessarily apply across the board.
“It would have to be something widespread, that you could encounter on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “That’s why you don’t see lion and tiger and bear phobias as often. It would also have to be something that was around and dangerous while humans were evolving. Things that are dangerous right now, like guns, we haven’t had enough time to develop a predisposition to detect really quickly.”
The results of the new study appear in the March 2008 issue of the journal, Psychological Science.
No one likes to be afraid. But it’s our brain’s wake-up call. Our internal Homeland Security. And just like the government entity that’s main goal is to protect us, it often sends out false alarms. We need to use the fear, understand why it exists, and listen to it. That way we can tell if it is our silly mind playing tricks on us as some people believe, or it’s a warning sign, preventing us from stepping in some sort of trouble.
