Fight or Flight - The Science of Fear

Picture the scene... lightning cracks in the storm-filled sky and a pipe organ sounds as a piercing scream fills the night air... Just kidding.

So yeah, this article is about fear, or more specifically, what makes something frightening. First of all I will tell you something about myself - I am a huge fan of horror. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing quite like a scary movie or book, which leads me to what got me thinking about this subject. A couple of months ago I went with some friends (and my future girlfriend) to see Andy Muschietti's horror masterpiece Mama. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the movie is about two sister foundlings who were... I guess the word is still 'adopted'... by a ghost who turns out to be a bit touchy about who gets visitation rights with her daughters. The movie didn't scare me too much, but I'm not trying to sound super manly or say the movie was bad - I was just distracted. The first time I saw the titular ghost it scared the bejesus out of me. After I recovered my manliness I started to wonder - why was she so scary? It's not like its something I've seen before and know to be dangerous or something I should be afraid of - it's not like she exists. I realise that on some websites this is where I would go on to rant about how Mama does, in fact, exist and aforementioned freaky-mother-ghost is the subject of a global conspiracy perpetrated by 'Them' or 'They'. Don't worry - thats my other blog... kidding. Or am I? *x-files music*

Mama... she's a lot scarier live.
(source)

So what is it that makes monsters like mama so frightening? As human beings one of the key survival mechanisms we have is that of fear. As everyone knows fear tells us what we need to stay away from to avoid a sticky, violent or otherwise hilarious death. I can only speak for myself when I say that I haven't encountered any creepy dried-out- looking manifestations of maternal jealousy floating about during my daily routine - so why is she so scary? and how does fear work anyway? Turns out it is a complicated issue, but it seems to boil down to innate fear of certain characteristics and a natural fear of the strange and unknown.

Our experiences of fear can be attributed to a part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala are two small almond-shaped regions located deep within the brain tissue. The fear response is quite complex and involves several parts of the brain, but the amydala makes it happen by telling another part of the brain, the hypothalamus, to initiate the flight or fight response.

The High road and the Low Road: How Fear is Created

No, I'm not being philosophical: these are the two routes the fear response takes through the brain. I know I was raving about the amygdala before, but there are a few other brain bits that play a vital role in the fear response: the thalamus, the hippocampus and the hypothalamus - all part of the limbic system which is the part of the brain responsible for basic emotions.

The wiring responsible for basic emotions (source)

Picture the scene: you are woken in the night by the noise of a door opening in footsteps despite the fact that nobody is home. You grab your trusty baseball bat from beside your door and creep out into the hallway where you smash the shadowy figure of a potential intruder in the face, at which point you remember that your grandmother is staying for the night and she often gets up in the night to have a drink of water. Boy, your face is red... as is hers (sorry). 

In this case, your dear old grandmother's demise is due to the low road. The two processes take place at the same time, but one is faster than the other. The sound of the door opening and the footsteps is the stimulus which activates your brain to send the data to the thalamus. The thalamus takes the data and simply passes it on to the amygdala - it doesn't know whether the sound is actually going to result in you getting murdered or not, it just does the neurological equivalent of "Ask my supervisor.". The amygdala then tells the hypothalamus to tell you that you that you should probably take action to defend yourself (i.e. batter your granny to death) or run away - the flight or fight response. Unfortunately for her you chose to fight.

On the other hand, if you had waited for the impulse to finish taking the high road, your granny would still be happily alive. When you hear the unexpected sound your brain knows that it could have several meanings, so it sends the data to both the thalamus (low road) and the hippocampus (the high road - not a university for big grey water dwelling animals). The hippocampus has the ability to interpret the data and give it context. When the data reaches the hippocampus it compares the sound to things you have heard before and it looks for other information to clarify the situation. If the hippocampus had time, it could have told you that it was probably your grandmother moving about and you probably shouldn't kill her unless there is some kind of inheritance involved.

The high road and the low road explains why we sometimes get scared when we don't need to be. Our brain is just being safe in a 'shoot-first-ask-questions-later' sort of way, but why do we fear certain things? 

Innate and Conditioned Fear

This one seems more stupid than scary... (source)

Some things we are innately afraid of, which is why monsters which don't really exist are still frightening. Quite sensibly so, we are afraid of things that could pose a threat to us: things with claws and big teeth and things that poison, bite or carry disease. The best example of this is probably the fear of snakes. It is thought that most, if not all, human beings have a hard-wired fear of snakes - this has been demonstrated by people who have never seen a snake before who are still somehow afraid of them. Charles Darwin even noted that fear of a puff adder lunging at him from behind glass overrode any sensibility and logic and always induced fear. Observations of twins raised apart have suggested that the tendency towards fear and the severity of the response are genetic, while the object of the fear is down the environment.

Another way we can acquire fear is through conditioning. Unfortunately the best scientific evidence of this is a fine example of a scientist being a complete asshole. In the infamous 'Little Albert' experiment, American psychologist John B. Watson conditioned a baby to be afraid of rats. The poor baby, called Albert (go figure), was exposed to several animals including a rat, to none of which he showed any sign of fear. Douchebag Watson proceeded to frighten the child with a loud noise every time he was shown the rat, which led to him getting upset any time he saw the rat whether or not the noise was made. This type of fear is called conditioned fear and accounts for a lot of fear in our lives - like someone being afraid of dogs because they were bitten by one as a child, or a fear of roads because of a bad car accident. The amygdyla also plays an important role in memory and associates the bad memory with the feeling of fear.

So it turns out that we are afraid of scary movies because we have no say in the matter - its our brain automatically trying to save us from potential dangers and the reason most of us don't run screaming out of the cinema or attack the screen with a knife is because the hippocampus kicks in and reminds us that we are seeing a movie and it isn't real. Though it would be pretty hilarious if that did happen.

So why does fear feel good sometimes? That's a story for another day.

As with every article I post here, this one has been thoroughly researched and a list of sources can be provided for anyone who is curious – just check out the contact page.