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
The complicated relationship between emotions and logic
At the press conference on Singapore Press Holding's plans to transfer its media business to a not-for-profit entity, a reporter asked if "the company will now pivot to emphasise editorial integrity, for example, ahead of advertiser interests".
This prompted an angry response from the CEO: "The fact that you dare to question the SPH title for, in your words, 'conceding to the advertisers', I take umbrage in that comment." You can check out the full response below.
Immediately, social media was filled with reactions to the CEO's response, most negative. Many criticised him for an overly-emotional outburst to what they perceived to be a simple question.
The law minister later said that Ng’s reply was “most unfortunate”.
Ng himself also came out subsequently to apologise for his language (but not his response).
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For a newspaper which had falling readership, CEO Ng Yat Chung certainly showed his team how to make the news and get people interested again.
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Which all makes for a super interesting case-study on why we think and act the way we do. Why did CEO Ng reply in such strong terms? What were some influences? Did he not know that it might lead to backlash?
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The intuitive answer is that the CEO lost his cool. He allowed emotions to overwhelm his rationality, and as a result gave an angry answer to his detriment. Surely this must be the case, right?
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No. This (expected) false dichotomy between rationality and emotions is a useful place for us to start.
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We tend to think of emotions as unthinking reaction, while rationality is the opposite, it’s thoughtful consideration. What we want then seems straightforward: more rationality, less emotions.
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But consider what really happened. A question was directed to the chairman.
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The CEO a) didn’t need to give an answer, the chairman had already addressed the question; and b) if CEO did want to add on (as he did in this case), he was not put on a spot. He had time to think about what to say. Finally, after giving his reply, he added something that isn’t necessary and is by definition detrimental to himself – “chairman is a gentleman, I’m not”.
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Here, we introduce a few basic elements of neuroscience 101.
1) Generally, we categorise the frontal cortex in the brain as the area regulating rational thought, and the limbic system, in particular the amygdala, as the center for emotions. This is a simplification, but nonetheless it is a useful working model.
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The final decision for most thoughts and actions we take has to be “approved” by the frontal cortex, the rational center of our brain (some exceptions, but broadly true). Notice that the CEO makes several deliberate (whether is conscious or not, well that's a far longer debate) decisions. He decides that he has to give a reply, even when he didn’t need to. He had time to decide what he wanted to say. And he makes an additional decision to justify his answer. All of these necessarily have to be done by the frontal cortex. Your emotional parts of the brain are not capable of making these decisions. Hold this thought.
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2). How do we know what a brain region does specifically? One fundamental rule is what gives inputs to this brain region, and where its output goes. If a brain region has inputs from olfaction (our sense of smell) and outputs to the insula (disgust), it almost certainly has to do with processing inputs from smell.
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In 1960s, a giant of neuroscience, MIT’s Walle Nauta, studied what brain regions sent connections to the frontal cortex, and what regions the frontal cortex projected out to. He realised that the frontal cortex projected out to the limbic system, in particular the amygdala. In fact, there is a region in our prefrontal cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, that exists almost exclusively to interface with your emotions.
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Crucially, these projections are bidirectional. Your emotions can shape your thoughts. The intensity from emotions can cloud your thinking – we are familiar with this. When you are very angry, it’s hard to be completely rational. You view things in more negative light and say things you might regret.
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But the converse is also true. You can try this right now. You can make yourself sad just by thinking about all the regrets that you will have when you die, or the loved ones whom will inevitably leave you. You can make yourself angry just thinking about someone you dislike. Just your thoughts alone can trigger your emotions, even if nothing is happening in reality.
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These 2 points bring us to the crux of emotions and rationality. Studying each on its own, they seem to be opposites. They certainly feel this way. Like oil and water, emotions and logic don’t mix; additionally, one feels a lot more inaccurate than the other.
But let’s consider the question that Ng replied to again: "the company will now pivot to emphasise editorial integrity, for example, ahead of advertiser interests":
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- Does this question not suggest that SPH currently prioritises advertisers’ needs over editorial integrity? Hence, is this an attack?
- Do you think this is the first time the CEO is answering questions on editorial integrity? How many times have you questioned if the Straits Times, for example, is biased?
-Do you think that the CEO had formed a prior impression of other Singaporean media companies, and how they maintain editorial independence in the face of advertising dollar? What impressions do you think he has of these competitors?
Do you think he had formulated a very strong opinion to these (sort of) question in his head before the press conference? Or put more simply, was it the prior thought and opinion that he carried that made him angry, or did his anger cause him to have angry thoughts and opinion?
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By now, we should be able to appreciate that emotions and rationality are at times very difficult to differentiate. In some cases, they might even be complementary.
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Even if the anger was to come first, and the rationality comes later, for him to decide to reply in the manner he did necessarily means that his rationality had justified his anger. The anger alone doesn't shape the decision to reply and the content of the reply. It is the rationality.
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The rationality then, is the nail in the coffin. Again, remember what the CEO said at the end of his response. “Chairman is a gentleman, I’m not”. It is an indication that the CEO isn’t just feeling angry, he is rationally convinced that he should be angry, because of the perceived insinuation. If there was no rational approval, he could simply have just been angry, without replying.
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Emotions and rationality are thus not like and oil and water, never mixing. More appropriately, they are like egg and flour.
Examined on their own, egg and flour seem like very different entities. But imagine the CEO’s response to be a cake. A cake contains both egg and flour, but they are no longer distinguishable as individual entities. When we eat cake, we can't taste just flour or egg. We taste only the whole.
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Similarly, the CEO's reply cannot be broken down into emotions vs rationality. It only exists as the combination.