preview

What is Fear and What Causes It? Essay

Better Essays
Open Document

Fear is something that large amounts of people have encountered at least once at some point in their lives. It has been said to have caused a variety of outcomes, many of them being largely negative. Therefore, it is a common human response to react to fear by counteracting it with positivity and/or success. The idea people have of what fear is depends on the person. In the article “How Fear Works”, for example, fear is defined as a “chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals” (Layton 1). The website “Psychology Today” defines fear another way, calling it “a vital response to physical and emotional danger” ("Fear Paranoia”). There are several other definitions people have on the …show more content…

These fears end up playing a huge part in their lives at work (or at home) and the result of the fears a person has towards the potential outcomes in his or her life is that they could control the whole way that he or she lives his or her life (Berns).

Another cause for people having fear is the past experiences they have had. Generally, if something bad has happened to somebody, they try to forget about it and/or they try to make sure it never happens again. However, in doing so, they still have a subconscious fear that something similar to the terrible event they’ve experienced may somehow manage to happen again, especially if there are a few similarities between the past event and the current situation. For example, if a man had surgery for his heart to perform better and he nearly died, he may be very reluctant to ever have surgery to his heart or any other body part(s) again.

Another more debatable reason people have fear inserts the claim that humans may simply inherit genes that transmit fear(s) towards certain things. It is believed by some scientists that the negative experiences that an organism’s ancestor(s) have encountered in his or her life may have manifested a fear in the organism. This fear then can get passed down to that organism’s future offspring, through sperm cells, as part of the new

Get Access