This episode contains discussions of fear, anxiety, and other mental health issues. If these topics are triggering for you, this may be a good episode to skip. The information in this episode is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you hear on a podcast. Reliance on any information provided in this episode is solely at your own risk. If you think you're having a medical emergency, call your doctor or local emergency number immediately.
Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I am one of those people. My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast.
From Dune by Frank Herbert. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. What sparks fear in you? Social situations, exams, medical assessments, certain animals or environments, being alone in the city, the wilderness, or at the sea, darkness? Some of these fears are ancient, and some have developed in response to our rapidly expanding and evolving world.
While fear is mostly seen as a negative response to stress, it is also what allowed humans to survive for generations and become who we are today. In this episode, we're going to examine the physical and psychological aspects of fear, as well as why some forms of fear keep us safe, some forms burden us, and some forms are sought out as entertainment. We all know what fear feels like. The human body has a specific set of physical responses to fear.
Racing heart, sweating, and dilated pupils are the main responses. But shivering, shaking, having to pee, chills, feeling jumpy or ready to run are also common. Fear activates a network of threat-responsive brain regions, such as the hypothalamus, a small area in the middle of the human brain that assists in controlling body temperature, heart rate, hunger, and mood through hormone release, and the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of gray matter next to the hypothalamus that's primarily responsible for emotional responses and plays a key role in identifying potential threats and triggering the fight-or-flight response. The amygdala and hypothalamus are both part of the limbic system of the human brain.
The limbic system is responsible for emotions and behavior. The amygdala is connected to the hypothalamus and the prefrontal cortex, but has projections into several other brain circuits as well. The amygdala also functions in regulating anxiety, aggression, fear conditioning, emotional memory, and social cognition. It's also involved in conditioning using stimuli of appetite, such as food, sex, and drugs.
Studies in humans indicate that the amygdala is the prime director in recognition, expression, and experience of fear. However, in neuroimaging studies, meaning those that help us see what parts of the brain activate in response to certain stimuli, the amygdala is also activated by a broad range of unpleasant and pleasant stimuli. This has opened up study of the amygdala as not one structure, but a collection of structures. The amygdala also plays a role in memory and attention, with the possibility that it also plays a developmental and learning-related role.
This suggests that there is no single brain structure for processing fear. Instead of a dedicated fear circuit, it appears that different emotional behaviors, ranging from defense to desire, are controlled by specific groups of neurons within the same structure, the amygdala, and can't be separated with current neuroimaging techniques. When you perceive danger, a distress signal is sent from the eyes or ears to the amygdala. If the situation is considered dangerous, a distress signal is sent to the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, which cause physiological reactions in the human body. Cortisol is your body's main stress hormone and acts like a built-in alarm system to control mood, motivation, and fear. It keeps your body on high alert. The body responds to the hormones by dilating the pupils to take in more light and aid in perceiving the threat.
Tiny muscles contract, causing the hairs on your body to stand on end, which pulls the skin at their base, causing a chilling sensation. The movement also distorts the skin, causing a horripilation, or goosebumps. Your heart rate increases, pumping more blood around your body, which causes your internal temperature to rise. This then activates your sweat glands, which help regulate your temperature.
The body is getting ready to move quickly, and if necessary, defend itself against a threat. All of this happens so fast that you're barely aware of it. However the response is triggered, the human body is usually able to regulate that fear response. When the threat has passed, cortisol levels fall and the body powers down the fear response.
However, if the threat continues, the body keeps certain parts of the nervous system active. Occasionally, the stress response will continue even if the threat is only perceived to be present. If the threat has passed, but you still feel threatened, the stress response will continue. The body can also overreact to non-life-threatening stressors, leading to negative effects on physical and psychological health.
Being scared to death is possible, but it's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Pre-existing conditions are typically a factor. Dr. Mark Estes, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said things like haunted houses and scary movies are not at all likely to cause fear-induced death.
The more dangerous situations involve adrenaline surges in response to life-threatening situations. So, now that we know what the fear response is, what sparks it in most humans? Other than direct threats, such as a speeding car, a person who means us harm, or an attacking animal, most of the time, it's ambiguity. The situations in which people, environments, or objects are unclear in whether they pose a threat or not.
For example, large abandoned buildings that once held a lot of people can create a sense of fear, especially if they once housed troubled populations, such as prisons, mental hospitals, or orphanages. Many of these types of buildings are in remote, isolated locations. If something bad were to happen, communication and help might be difficult to attain. Also, the darkness and the unfamiliar layout of the building may cause disorientation and slower-than-normal movement.
Hedges, iron fences, or crumbling stairways are also obstacles preventing easy escape. If something were to attack, it would be difficult to get away. This is why supposedly haunted houses and abandoned buildings give us the creeps, because it's unknown whether they represent a threat or not. British geographer J.
Appleton was one of the first researchers to describe two crucial features that determine whether a place is attractive or frightening to humans. The more prospect and refuge a place offers us, the more attractive it is. Refuge means having a secure, protected place to hide where one can be sheltered from danger, while prospect refers to one's clear, unobstructed view of the landscape. Attractive places offer us a lot of prospect and a lot of refuge.
To quote Appleton directly, there are, evolutionarily speaking, places where, quote, you can see without being seen and eat without being eaten, end quote. Most abandoned buildings are very low prospect and very high refuge for unknown things that may be lying in wait to get us. Research has confirmed that people experience such environments as unsafe and dangerous. These places also lack what environmental psychologists refer to as legibility.
Legibility is the ease in which one can travel through a place and recognize where they have been, in other words, a place where we can't easily get lost. Most abandoned buildings or supposedly haunted houses have some sort of gruesome story associated with them, such as a grisly death or an accident. The older a place is, the more time there has been for tragic things to have taken place. Stimuli such as moldy odors, antiquated architecture, wood interiors, and old portraits reinforce the age of a place.
If the building is no longer occupied, signs of life suddenly interrupted and frozen in time only amplify the ambiguity about what must have taken place in the space. This goes for people as well. When we face confusing signals from an individual that leave us at a loss in interpreting their intentions, we feel uneasy. The person is unpredictable, and our bodies go on alert, keeping us in a state of hypervigilance to help us figure out if there is, in fact, anything to fear.
If you're walking through the woods alone at night and hear something rustling in the bushes, you respond with a heightened level of sensory arousal and attention. You behave as if there is a predator bent on harming you, hiding just out of sight. If it turns out to be leaves rustling in the wind or a rabbit hopping through the undergrowth, you lose little by overreacting. But if a true threat is present and you fail to activate your fear response, the cost could be quite high.
Scientists struggle to study the effects of genuine threats on people's mental and physical state due to ethical and practical constraints of such experiments. However, new research using an immersive experience gave some insight into how the human body responds to threats. The researchers focused on the body's responses to threats in different social contexts and when the threats were expected or unexpected. The immersive experience they used for this was a haunted house.
156 participants went through the haunted house in small groups. During the 30-minute experience, the groups Box in, we are surrounded by stimuli that will activate hypervigilance in our everyday lives, in large drafty houses, in deep dark forests, on desolate foggy moors, and dark dimly lit alleyways. Ambiguity is the fear bringer. How we evolved this survival mechanism, how it causes issues for us in our modern environment, and why some of us seek out fear-inducing experiences, is coming up.
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You'll have our eternal gratitude. Originally, fear functioned as a survival mechanism. Anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago from a species commonly designated as either Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis, who in turn were the descendants of Homo erectus. Humans, or Homo sapiens, began exhibiting signs of behavioral modernity, which refers to a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits believed to be unique to Homo sapiens, such as abstract thinking, planning, art, ornamentation, exploitation of large game, and blade technology around 160,000 to 70,000 years ago, possibly earlier.
Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cultural adaptations, such as social norms, language, and extensive help and coordination beyond close kin. Homo sapiens formed groups, communities, and then societies. They were able to survive and adapt through group dynamics and cooperation. Fear is a large part of this survival and adaptation.
Fear and fear behavior kept Homo sapiens safe. For example, fear of heights kept them from falling from great heights. Fear of water kept them from drowning. Fear of people outside their community helped them avoid possible attacks.
Fear of being stared at kept them safe from aggressive people. Fear of spiders, snakes, and large predatory animals kept them safe from being bitten or eaten by them. Only some of these fears are relevant today, but that doesn't mean that our bodies don't still physically react in ways that developed early on. For example, our Homo sapien ancestors were hairy, and when threatened, their hair stood on end to make them appear bigger to scare away that threat.
That's why we get goosies when we're scared, despite our body hair being minuscule in comparison. The study of fear in terms of survival and evolution exploded in the 1970s. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania proposed in 1971 that certain innate fears reflect evolutionary learning. We learned to fear certain events and situations that were survival threats in the evolutionary past.
Modern phobias especially represent this, which is why there are common phobias for snakes and other threatening animals, heights, closed as well as wide open spaces, and social interactions. In 1972, Paul Ekman of the University of California published cross-cultural data that suggested human facial expressions represent biologically evolved adaptations. An expression of anger, for example, is a threat signal that may indicate harmful intent, whereas a smile is the opposite, a reassuring, friendly signal. Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayer proposed in 1974 that animal behavior could be categorized according to what the fear was directed at, behaviors specifically directed toward the physical non-living world and the world of living things.
Fear behavior directed at living things could also be broken down into behaviors directed toward one's own species, which includes all forms of social behavior, and behaviors directed towards members of other species, in which the predator-prey relationship was central. Predators and prey are constantly locked in competitive relationships called evolutionary arms races, which are central to the development of evolutionary adaptations. For example, improved hunting skills in predators puts pressure on prey species to improve their defenses, which in turn puts pressure on predators again to be able to catch ever more attentive, faster, and more unpredictably moving prey. There is larger pressure on prey, as a failure of defense against a predator ends with death, while a hunting failure is merely a missed meal for the predator.
This situation suggests that all animals that have played the role of prey are evolutionarily built for exaggerated caution and avoidance of danger. This may be the biological foundation for many human anxiety disorders. They aren't disorders, they are biological survival mechanisms that are no longer required, but are still active. By learning to associate subtle cues, such as smells and sounds of a predator, which occur before it can be seen, prey animals have early warning of threats.
Thus, learning to identify these subtle signs of lurking predators was highly important for survival, which is why little environmental input is required to start the fear response. This also implies social learning of these signs. For example, seeing another community member being attacked or showing signs of the fear response taught early humans to fear and to detect that predator by observing others' experiences. The ability to detect predators shaped a highly sensitive visual system that was also useful in social contexts.
Primates, and especially Homo sapiens, are highly vigilant when it comes to potentially aggressive encounters with other Homo sapiens. Human facial muscles are unique in their ability to move around facial tissues to change their visual appearance. Facial expressions are highly indicative of emotion. It's very possible that facial expressions evolved as an early form of communication.
Some human social stimuli create fear responses, like those that occur for predators, which help us avoid and escape a potential human threat. If a human shadow suddenly appears from a doorway in the dark alley, or a stranger's stare is interpreted as hostile, these subtle cues elicit fear and immediate avoidance. However, if avoidance is impossible, rather than an actual fight-or-flight, the ability to quiet the amygdala, reduce the fear response, and promote yielding in social conflicts also developed to navigate fear responses within the community. No one wanted to leave the protection of the community or be abandoned by it for aggressive behavior.
This is likely why social fears have a more cognitive, strategic character than other fears. While fear responses kept early Homo sapiens safe, the remnants of these physical and psychological mechanisms can sometimes be a burden in our modern society. Anxiety is similar to fear, but it's a preemptive bodily response, rather than a direct response to a clear and present threat. Humans are the only living things we know of whose fear response can be triggered merely by thinking about scary things.
A majority of mental illnesses and psychopathology arise from worrying about what could happen and what might be, often to the point of distorting what actually is. This aspect of the fear response gives the impression that fear depends on conscious experience. With little stimuli, the body begins preparing for anything, fight, flight, or freeze, through the autonomic nervous system, or ANS. We don't think about the ANS much because it operates involuntarily.
You don't consciously make your heart beat faster when you're exercising. It just happens. That's how the ANS works. Anxiety is a common emotion that often sets in in any situation that makes you feel fearful or unsure.
Typical signs of anxiety include feelings of nervousness and tension, racing pulse, sweating, and an uneasy stomach. Each person responds to stress and anxiety a little differently, and what makes one person anxious may have the opposite effect on someone else. Occasional moments of anxiety are normal, especially if you know the cause of your anxiety, such as getting on an airplane or preparing for a job interview. These feelings don't require a doctor's evaluation, unless the anxiety becomes so overwhelming in these situations that it interferes with your ability to function.
If you experience anxious feelings frequently, and you're not sure why, or it interferes with your daily life, please seek out a medical and or mental health professional for help. You may have an anxiety disorder that could be managed with a combination of therapy and medication. Excessive anxiety exhausts the body and undermines the benefits associated with the stress response. Chronic stress can lead to physical problems, like headaches, breathing problems, and increased risk of hypertension, heart attack, and stroke.
There are also negative psychological impacts, such as memory loss, sleep problems, and depression. People who have anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety disorder, GAD, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and specific phobias can experience alarming memory loss. For instance, individuals with clinically severe GAD tend to have greater difficulty remembering childhood attachment experiences. Some adult anxiety may be rooted in childhood experiences that left the child uncertain if a protective figure was available in times of trouble.
Acute stress disrupts the cognitive process of collecting and storing memories. Researchers found that short-term stress activated certain molecules that affected the brain's learning and memory region. Therefore, both long-term and short-term anxiety can impact human memory. In a strange twist of fate, experiencing a frightening event is also likely something you'll never forget.
The memories combined with the emotions surrounding it keep the experience in the forefront of the mind, possibly causing physiological reactions every time the memory is replayed. This occurrence is normal for a short period of time after a traumatic event, but when it keeps occurring over a longer period, it's labeled as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. But PTSD is quite a complicated condition, warranting an entire episode of its own. Knowing all this about the fear and stress response, why do we humans pay our hard-earned money to have the shit scared out of ourselves?
Given how easily creeped out and frightened we are by everyday things, why would we ever intentionally expose ourselves to things like haunted houses, horror movies, and true crime podcasts? Under some circumstances, creepiness and horror have a certain allure. The evidence of this Draw out our morbid curiosity. The Morbid Curiosity podcast is produced by H.
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