When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Cognitive dissonance - why it's so hard to change our minds
The great physicist Max Planck, widely regarded as the father of quantum theory, was a true scientist. Planck always respected what the evidence showed, even if it was the opposite of what he previously researched and believed.
But he observed that it was far harder to change the minds of others. His observation, the Planck Principle, also has a shorter and more succinct version - "Science progresses one funeral at a time."
Ok, a nice, warm and morbid start to our discussion.
But Plank's observation should be quite familiar to us. How often do you succeed in changing someone's mind in real life, even when the evidence is overwhelming? And you would also notice, it is especially difficult if someone had publicly stated his view, or if the belief is tied in part to identity - for example, ever tried changing someone' political affiliation?
One of the big reasons for this is what we call cognitive dissonance.
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Cognitive dissonance occurs when we are presented with new information or (are forced to ) perform a behaviour that contradcits with ur prior beliefs, values, or feelings.
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There is a tension that is created between what we think we should do, and what we are doing or seeing.
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This tension, what we term as dissonance, creates a discomfort within us.
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And we try to reduce this discomfort by reducing how we think about should act, and how we actually act.
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How does this happen? First a short 5 minute video. It seems like it was made a century ago, but the content is good, and it features Leon Festinger, the psychologist who came up with cognitive dissonance himself.
The experiment
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Participants were asked to perform a series of dull tasks for over an hour, (such as repeatedly putting pencils into drawers, turning things 90 degrees) intended to bore them.
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When the tasks were completed, the experimenter appealed to the participant to do a short briefing for the next waiting subject.
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Participants were promised either a $1 or $20 incentive (randomly assigned) if they told the next waiting subject that the tasks were really interesting.
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After the participants had done the briefing, they were asked about their own honest assessment of whether they found the tasks enjoyable:
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Those paid $20 openly shared that they found the tasks terribly boring​
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Those paid $1 shared that they enjoyed the tasks and found them interesting
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What??​ What happened?? Why would people who were paid $1 lie that they enjoyed the tasks when they clearly didn't? And why did those paid more not lie about it?
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Understanding Cognitive Dissonance
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All the participants didn't enjoy the tasks.
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So when they described the tasks to the next batch of subjects, everyone lied.
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They were then asked to share their honest review. If they had been asked what their opinion was before having to explain to the subjects, all their answers would have likely been the same.
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But having taken action, humans naturally feel the need to justify we have done.
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For those paid $20, the incentive was enough to justify their act of lying, i.e. "I was willing to tell the new subject it was enjoyable even when I didn't actually think so because I received a good incentive." The dissonance they feel is resolved from the money they received.
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But for those paid just $1, it's much harder to justify to themselves (and to the experimenter) why they had willingly told such a big lie for such a small incentive, i.e. "I thought the tasks were really boring; yet I told the subjects the tasks were interesting for just a small token of $1. There is a dissonance that causes them great discomfort.
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And so these participant sought to resolve their dissonance. They convinced themselves that they really thought the tasks were enjoyable. This way, it it would not violate any existing beliefs. If they "really enjoyed" the tasks, then they did not lie, they did not succumb to doing something opposite of what they thought for just a meagre sum of $1.
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The dissonance is resolved.
Or as Festinger puts even more starkly:
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|| "The general principle seems that people come to believe in and to love the things they have to suffer for."
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We see examples of cognitive dissonance very regularly in our lives
- We want to lose weight
- We end up eating far too much and exercising far too little
- So we tell ourselves hat it's ok because diet starts next month, and we diet really hard the next month.
It could be a change that we want to make in life:​
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We're unhappy with our job​
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but we're scared to make a change
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So we convince ourselves that perhaps the opportunity that came wasn't right for us.
We see this in our interactions with friends and family:​
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We want to spend more time with the people that matter​
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But hey it's a busy period, colleagues are working hard, you don't want to look bad in comparison
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So we console ourselves that we had the best intentions to spend time with friends and family, but this is just a bad month.
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In particular, cognitive dissonance is very evident in some of the most thorny issues today. Take this experiment for example:
University College of London wanted to test how people's views are influenced by new evidence. They gathered a group of climate change deniers and believers and split them up into 2 groups (both groups had believers and deniers).
Group A was told that recent evidence from scientists suggests that climate change will be much worse than originally forecasted.
Group B was told the opposite, that recent evidence suggests climate is far less serious than originally forecasted.
So did new evidence influence the participants?
The results can be seen in the 2 pictures above (if you're on mobile, click to magnify).
It's not surprising since we have just gone through cognitive dissonance. New evidence only matters if it fits our original view:
In Group A, believers accepted the new evidence and were now more worried about the adverse impact of climate change. Deniers on the other hand rejected the new evidence, claiming that the scientists faked the data or had an agenda.
In Group B, the exact opposite. Deniers laughed off climate change as the hoax they always believed it to be, while it was now the belivers that claimed fake data or scientist agenda.
And this experiment is a great example of how cognitive dissonance amkes it so difficult for us to change our minds, what Max Planck observed at the very top of the page. To avoid dissonance, our minds can still find ways to harmonise what we believe with what is reality by devising the most complicated justifications.
To reduce dissonance, we often choose comforting lies to explain things away, rather than face unpleasant truths.