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.
Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Context and our decision making
As you consider some of these examples, you'll see that your brain is truly quite remarkable. It understands that meaning is dependent on context. And so your brain has evolved to process the context as well as the meaningAnd most of the time, our brain does a reasonably good job. Look at the picture above, with 2 very common strings:
At the top, we have "A, B, C".
And at the bottom, we have "12, 13, 14".
Notice something? The "B" and the "13" is written in the exact same way in both lines. Yet our brains were able to automatically interpret the exact same figure in 2 different ways, simply because of the context.
Here's another example:
Again, same exact word: "Date".
And again, no problems. With your understanding of context, you are able to assess the different meanings of the same word correctly. You are able to make out, for example:
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That can and would want to eat one date but not another.
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You would be out on a date but dating would not go out of date.
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You might go on a date to eat dates
Think about how awesome your brain really is to figure all these out, pretty much instantaneously. Imagine explaining the above to a new English speaker: without the familiarity of context, it becomes a landmine of potential misinterpretations and confusion.
Two final examples below, but I'm sure you can think of many others. That our brains can navigate complexity because of context is not a difficult concept.
Our mastery of context allows us to appreciate sarcasm and irony
And enables us to understand metaphors and analogies; we are the only species that can feel touched by a non-living Amazon box weathering heavy rain. This whole scene is fictional, it never takes place! But we get it, we get the message.
So we've covered the good bits. We have to assess and make many decisions in life, which is very tiring and energy-consuming. Hence our brains have evolved to assess and make decisions quickly and efficiently. We are able to do so not just through the information itself, but through the context in which the information lies. And our brains turn out to be pretty good at interpreting context.
But there's, of course, the other side, the not so good bits. Sometimes, we place too much emphasis or misjudge the context, which subsequently causes us to misinterpret the information.
At a simpler level, w have an example like the one below: we are so used to information being used in one context, we transfer its meaning to another.
"Enjoy a good day ahead" and "enjoy the next 24 hours" means the exact same thing. But because we are used to hearing 24 hours in the context of a countdown to something happening, it puts us into unease.
It gets more severe in the examples below. Let's take a lok at
Try This!
What is more likely?
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Roger Federer loses the first set badly
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Roger Federer loses the first set badly but comes back strong to win the match
*Disclaimer: I only chose Roger Federer because he seems to be a figure everyone is familiar with. I have no interest if he wins or loses, and if you similarly couldn't care less about tennis, just pick an answer for the sake of argument!
Amazingly, most people would believe that it is more likely for 2nd scenario to happen - that Roger Federer "loses the first set badly but comes back strong to win the match". Now, this completely violates basic logic, because the second statement is a subset of the first! Statement 1 needs to happen for statement 2 to be true, but statement 1 need not end up as statement 2.
Similarly, people estimated that there are more cases of lung cancer caused by smoking, than the total number of lung cancer cases as a whole. We are so used to the contextual knowledge that smoking cause lung cancer that we overemphasise its effects.
Different forms of this example occur often enough in our daily lives. It is the essence of pre-conceived notions. This applies when we deal with people. Because we have a favourable impression of someone, we think that he/she is likely to be right on other matters. When 2 or more colleagues/friends present a different opinion to a matter, we might already have made up our minds who is going to be correct even before listening to what they have to say. (More on this, at our "pigeonholes" page.)
The context we are exposed to matters as well. Food tastes better in a fancy restaurant. Wine tastes better in a glass than in a plastic cup. The media we are exposed to, be it our echo chambers on social media or Hollywood movies might cause us to develop views on certain races and occupations. For example, species like sharks, wolves, and snakes have been forever vilified even though we are much more dangerous to them then they are to us.
When we change from one working place to another, meet a new group of friends, travel and explore a new county, join a new social group. or pursue a new area of expertise, the change in context causes us to view neutral matters completely differently. Or we might be able to notice information that we didn't notice before. There are many examples of this; food is an obvious case: for most cultures, eating raw food sounds like a backward step in evolution, potentially dangerous to health and surely untasty. But with the proliferation of Japanese culture, almost every country now has a sushi chain, and raw fish became not only acceptable but desirable. Most of us also consequently developed a better understanding and assessment of various types of fish, of condiments like soy sauce and wasabi, and of chefs who could be trained in ways other than cooking.
2 final examples that show how easy it is for many of us to make massive misjudgements because of fo the context and not the content, especially if the context if is very salient.
1) Johnson et al found that people were willing to pay an average of $14.12 to buy a $100,000 life insurance policy covering deaths caused by terrorist acts, but were only willing to pay $12.13 for the for a $100,000 life insurance policy even if it covered all causes of death. Think about the context post 9/11. Would you not also have made a similar misjudgement?
2) As I am writing this in early February 2020, the top news spreading around the world is that of the novel coronavirus. 60,383(59,805) have been infected, with 1,370(1367) deaths so far (these figures will certainly rise in the days to come).
The context of this virus - a contagious virus, the numbers involved, and the constant media attention has created a climate of fear and paranoia. In many countries, people began panic-buying surgical masks and essentials. Citizens wanted governments to take larger and more comprehensive steps. They felt fearful and frustrated by the insufficient stock of masks, even though it is logistically difficult for everyone to have one new mask per day. Some wanted visitors from "higher risk countries" to be banned from entering their country, only for citizens of these "higher risk countries" to demand the same in return.
But let's just think about this for a moment:
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99% of cases occurred in China, with the majority in the epicentre of Wuhan City in Hubei.
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While ~20 other countries have cases, no country has more than 50.
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The mortality rate of the virus is 0.2% outside Wuhan; there are 3 deaths outside China. The mortality rate is the same as the common cold. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, many more people have died from the cold.
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World Health Organisation experts have elaborated that there is no need to wear a mask if one is not ill; indeed a mask is not a particularly good preventive measure.
Extrapolating a little further:
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In the regions above, just based on the rate of injuries and deaths from accidents, people are far more likely to die from travelling to the supermarket than from the coronavirus.
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9 out of the 10 top causes of death are disease caused by our own lifestyles; ironically, we are much more likely to kill ourselves than the virus.
You might point out that the fear and paranoia that people felt is understandable and expected (it ticks all 5 boxes of fear - read more in our chapter on fear). And isn't it precisely this paranoia and attention that exerted enough pressure on governments to take sufficient action and prevented the virus from spreading? Perhaps. And I have no quarrels with preventive measures. My argument is simply this: it seems obvious that physical harm or possible death is fear-inducing, and sparks people into panic-buying and general meltdown. But if this was truly the case, why is there no panic or fear for:
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Our own lifestyle choices? 9 of the top 10 causes of death are health diseases caused by our own lifestyles. We are much more likely to kill ourselves than any virus.
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In the regions above, based on the rate of traffic accidents, people are actually far more likely to get a serious injury or die travelling to and fro from the supermarket than from the coronavirus.
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People continue to drink-drive, not wear their seat-belts, or not wear helmets while travelling
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There is a high incidence rate of people not completing prescribed meditation, even at severe risk to their own health? In fact, behavioural scientists had to experiment with new methods, such as introducing a lottery to entice people to take their medication meant to save them.
People had good reasons to be stressed, scared, and afraid. But the real crux lies with proportionality -context creates an amplifying effect which causes us to panic in one instance and ambivalent in another.
More on the coronavirus in this piece here.
