We are born with only two innate
Fear of the unknown is universal, but it seems to take form most commonly in three basic human fundamental fears: Fear of Death, Fear of Abandonment or Fear of Failure.
Fear can be innate or learned. Examples of innate fear include fears that are triggered by predators, pain, heights, rapidly approaching objects, and ancestral threats such as snakes and spiders.
Other scholars suggest that our fear of death is what underpins the majority of human action – we are so anxious to face its inevitability that we fill our lives completely as a means to ignore or evade it. Death is one of the only things we know is for certain, and yet the uncertainty of it is what truly terrifies us.
Innate fears are hardwired in the human brain and serve to keep us safe from harmful situations; examples of these fears are fear of loud noises and fear of falling. In addition to these innate fears, animals learn to fear things that hurt them or make them uncomfortable.
Through evolution, humans have therefore developed a tendency to be scared of darkness. “In the dark, our visual sense vanishes, and we are unable to detect who or what is around us. We rely on our visual system to help protect us from harm,” Antony said. “Being scared of the dark is a prepared fear.”
A fear of falling, like a fear of animals is considered an innate fear. It means we're born with the fear as part of our survival instincts. "That's because it's adaptive to have certain fears," Norrholm said. "It make sense to have a fear of falling."
1. Acrophobia. Acrophobia is the fear of heights and it affects more than 6% of people. People who have acrophobia can have anxiety attacks, which causes them to avoid high places, such as bridges, towers, or tall buildings.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words. Understanding the phobia can help you overcome it and live a fulfilling life. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary, and ironically, it means the fear of long words.
We are born with only two innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud sounds. A 1960 study evaluated depth perception among 6- to14-month-old infants, as well as young animals.
Rhodophobia, fear of the color pink. Melanophobia, fear of the color black.
Lastly, people may fear bugs because they look so different from us. Humans and bugs do not share a close evolutionary bond, which makes many bugs appear otherworldly. In addition to their alien appearance, bugs can also scare us when we witness them operating in large swarms or colonies.
Primal fear is defined as an innate fear that is programmed into our brains. These are fears like arachnophobia (fear of spiders) or ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). They are natural fears because of human evolution.
It's hardly a rare fear; an estimated 6% of the general population suffer from full-blown arachnophobia. The leading explanation is that our ancestors evolved to fear spiders, and this has been passed on to us. But there are a few problems with this, point out the authors of a new paper in Scientific Reports.
(Note: There are five core fears, or “universal themes of loss,” that capture the basic interpretations of danger that we all make. They are 1) fear of abandonment, 2) loss of identity, 3) loss of meaning, 4) loss of purpose and 5) fear of death, including the fear of sickness and pain.)
1. Arachibutyrophobia (Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth) Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. While the phenomenon has happened to everyone at one point or another, people with arachibutyrophobia are extremely afraid of it.
You've probably heard that public speaking is feared more than death itself. It sounds crazy, but that's what people say. Is there any truth to this? Certainly the vast majority of people rank fear of public speaking as number one – 75% according to the National Institutes of Mental Health.
S.M., also sometimes referred to as SM-046, is an American woman with a peculiar type of brain damage that dramatically reduces her ability to feel fear.
We may never live perfectly fearless lives, but we must discover how to leave fear behind at important times and take action if we are to make progress, even if we are uncertain (without taking foolish risks).
True fearlessness actually does exist, however. It's an effect of an extremely rare disease called Urbach-Wiethe. Only about 400 people have ever been recorded with the condition. Symptoms include a hoarse voice and small bumps around the eyes, as well as calcium deposits in the brain.
We conclude that fear and safety learning processes, both involved in anxiety development, are moderately genetically influenced as expressed both in the brain and the body.
According to the Deconstructing Anxiety model, the “core fear” is the single thought construct responsible for all our struggles. It is the essential interpretation one makes in childhood for how life can be threatening and becomes the lens through which we view reality whenever we are not wholly fulfilled.