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
Are males really better than females at math?
We've all heard this one before. Males are better at math, while females are better at languages.
And it does seem true, doesn't it?
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A disproportionate number of mathematicians and physicists are male, and this ratio is particularly skewed at the very top. This famous photo below assembled the top minds humankind had to offer for math and science in 1927. What is striking is that there is only 1 female figure - Marie Curie.
Moreover, there have been a large number of press reports and studies that seemed to affirm this.
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In this influential study published in 1983, Benbow and Stanley looked at the SAT results of almost 40,000 students in the United States, from 1980 - 1982. These students were in grade 7 (age 12-13) - the period of transition between junior/primary to middle/secondary school (depending on which education system you're familiar with). Why is this significant? On one hand, students are just about old enough for a meaningful test like SAT. On the other hand, it minimises the effects of the environment - junior/primary schools are seen to be more equal in standards and teach simpler material, compared to middle/secondary school where differences between schools and teachers have a bigger influence on student performance.
The result?
While males were slightly ahead on average, the difference is especially pronounced among the best performers. Males outnumber females 13 to 1 out of those who scored 700 points or more.
For a period of time, there was even a plausible explanation offered. Some research hinted that testosterone fueled the growth in parts of the frontal cortex, the brain region involved in mathematical thinking. Grade 7 is the peak of puberty; testosterone is raging in males - that one region of the brain gets bigger, hence males are better at math.
Case closed, mystery solved, Sherlock Holmes gets to write another story and film another TV series.
Except, no, case not closed. While the story of males being better than females at math is intuitive and convenient, is it really the correct answer or the answer we expect? With actual results show males performing better than females, we assume that the difference must be explained by gender. But could gender itself be merely a proxy, masking the actual underlying reason?
A landmark study - Culture, Gender, and Math (Luigi Guison, Paola Sapienza et al) took a closer look. Agan, they examined the scores of another standardised test - PISA - across 275,000 participants in 60 different countries.
(read the full paper here:
They noticed something different. Take a look at the graph above:
- the vertical axis plots the difference in math scores between males and females;
- the horizontal axis plots a new variable - the level of gender equality, from lowest on the left to highest on the right).
The results? Again, females generally score lower than males.
But this effect is greatly influenced by the environment:
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In countries where there is low levels of gender equality - Turkey, Korea, Italy - females scored significantly worse than males.
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In countries where there is greater gender equality - Norway, Sweden - there was barely any difference between males and females.
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In Iceland, with the greatest gender equality, females performed better than males.
(Interestingly, females always scored better than males in verbals tests; they scored a little better in countries with less gender equality, and a lot better in countries with more gender equality.)
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So what explains the difference in results? As it turns out, cultures with more gender inequality reinforced the stereotype of males being better than females at certain things. Parents were more encouraging and supportive of sons in math (and in education in general) because "he is probably good at it", and more lackadaisical with daughters, because they are female and "not likely to be good at math". This bias extended to schools. It was observed that in gender unequal countries, teachers were more likely to pick male students to answer questions, and encouraged male students more.
So the idea of males being better than females at math is a sort self-fulfilling prophecy. Because people believed it to be true, they acted in a way to confirm these beliefs, thus eventually making it a reality.
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There are a few important takeaways from this:
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Very few outcomes occur because of just one reason. This is especially true with regards to human observations. It's very rare for one particular gene or one particular chromosome or one childhood experience shaped things to what they are. More likely, there is the interplay of several different factors, and we end up observing only the most obvious one while missing out on the others. Check out our page on what causes us to think and act the way we do.
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Most of the time, we adopt an opinion or view that sounds plausible very quickly, based on a few heuristics. This works reasonably well most of the time for simpler issues. But for complex issues, we might come to the wrong conclusion.
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We understand and explain the world in stories. Once formulated, our stories become very difficult to change. You can think of many stories in our lives that are not true, and yet are passed on by people from one generation to the next - that males are better than females at math, that Darwin invented evolution, that stomach ulcers are caused by spicy food or stress, that black cats are bad luck. Or more significantly, our own personal stories about ourselves which consequently shape our impressions and actions, and ultimately how we live our lives.
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