Notes on fear

Fear is induced by a perceived threat. The elevated Last Messenger and the Grand Qur'aan delivered to humanity by him are declared as : the Revivalist-Warner-Awakener. Its Root is "ن ذ ر". The basic perception infolded in the Root is to be; and make people in a state of cautiousness-awareness-alarmed of imminent-potential threat and its consequence if proper guards are not taken. It is to bring people out of a state of heedlessness and mindlessness, and inform, awaken and alert them about the facts hidden in the future. It is thus advance warning and admonishment to get out of the state of neglectfulness-unawareness and take safeguards to meet the eventuality and avert the danger and negative consequence.

Grand Qur'aan intermittently evocates the painful end of civilizations of the past and imminent threats of awful phenomenon present in the nature around the people. And it elaborates the painful consequences of certain acts that are bound to happen in future.

Fear is a fundamental aspect of survival. All living has to protect themselves from dangerous situations in order to survive. Fear is an ability to recognize or perceive danger resulting in urge to confront it or flee from it or a freeze or paralysis response is possible. The Survival Brain-Stem brain reacts to danger and threats of imminent danger. Brain death occurs when a person no longer has any activity in their brain stem and no potential for consciousness, even though their heart kept beating and oxygen circulating through their blood.  

Fundamental or basic emotions anger, fear, surprise and sadness.

Different patterns of bodily changes thereby code different emotions.

The optical faculty is the source for the people to experience awe by the awe-inducing nature scenes all around them reflecting the Divine providence and Will evidently. It is positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.

The verbs: and stem from Root: خ ش ى that signifies emotion of Awe which is a mixture of wonder and dread - feeling of amazement and respect mixed with fear that is coupled with a feeling of personal insignificance or powerlessness. Only such people experience awe, a fundamental emotional response, who mindfully observes the environment and the universe they live in. They quickly respond to admonition while people of opposite psyche/character-the stubborn: , who see not beyond their own self, purposely avoid listening it:

Actually, she was awed. Overwhelming, surprising, humbling, even a little terrifying—awe is what we feel when faced with something sublime, exceptional, or altogether beyond comprehension.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/health/the-science-of-awe-and-fulfillment#ixzz4g0t2Nkg9

Dacher Keltner, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, devotes much of his research to studying awe. In his 2009 book, Born to Be Good, he looks at the emotions beyond the "big six" (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise), believing that more nuanced sensations—compassion, forgiveness, humility, and awe—are what push us beyond self-interest and "wire us for good." Cultivating awe, he says, is part of unlocking the truest sense of life's purpose. 

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/health/the-science-of-awe-and-fulfillment#ixzz4g0tQzxW2

In Keltner's words, awe shifts a person's thinking "toward the collective." 

Researcher Jonathan Haidt, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, says that awe can also be prompted by witnessing acts of great generosity or humanity (à la Extreme Makeover: Home Edition). This "moral elevation," as Haidt calls it, appears to trigger the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin. "In these cases, awe sends the signal to move closer, and that clears the way for altruism, generosity, and acts of kindness," he says. 

A recent oxytocin study found that it is an important chemical messenger that controls some human behaviors and social interaction. It is oxytocin that triggers the bond between a mother and an infant, and it may also play a role in recognition, sexual arousal, trust and anxiety. Some research shows that the hormone may affect addiction and stress as well.
 

Keltner points to research done at Emory University, which revealed that the act of helping others activates the brain structures involved in reward and pleasure (Rilling et al., 2002). Keltner’s own research suggests a similar story: when people act on their compassion, perhaps with a smile or a wave, their bodies produce oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates kindness and nurturing. This finding suggests that the human body may have evolved a self-perpetuating drive to be compassionate (Rodrigues et al., 2009).

Chapter 12: Awe. The experience of awe has been, in modern times, extracted from its solely religious context to experience generally. Features of awe: 1) vastness, 2) accommodation, flavored by a) threat, b) beauty, c) ability, d) virtue, and/or e) the supernatural. Paul Woodruff analyzed Greek and Chinese conceptions of awe. Awe leads to modesty which incites a sense of commonality with other humans, which induces respect and reverence. Evolutionarily, David Sloan Wilson argues that awe serves to subjugate the sense of self in the communal identity. Awe is difficult to study because it is intermittent and depends upon experiences unlikely to happen in a laboratory. People experiencing awe report goose-bumps and feelings of social connection. There are several different brain structures that relate to various aspects of feeling good.

Unlike the "me, me, me" response that most types of pleasure trigger, awe—and its associated increase in oxytocin—makes us feel warm and fuzzy toward others. 

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/health/the-science-of-awe-and-fulfillment#ixzz4g0uf3AGA

We fear, an ill; through a natural aversion to it, and, from a sense, that it may happen to us: we are apprehensive, of losing a benefit; through an eager desire to obtain it, and, from a conviction that we never may: we dread, our adversary; through sentiments of esteem, when we know him our superior: we are afraid of danger; through a timid disposition.

Want of courage, makes us fear: Doubt of success, makes us apprehensive. Distrust of strength, makes us dread. Imagination itself, will, often, make us afraid.

The verbs: and stem from Root: خ ش ى that signifies emotion of Awe which is a mixture of wonder and dread - feeling of amazement and respect mixed with fear that is coupled with a feeling of personal insignificance or powerlessness. Only such people experience awe, a fundamental emotional response, who mindfully observes the environment and the universe they live in. They quickly respond to admonition while people of opposite psyche/character-the stubborn: , who see not beyond their own self, purposely avoid listening it:

Thus those; who have disavowed the First Cause - the Originator - the Creator Allah the Exalted, are the subject of Ayah that it little matters whether they are warned or not warned of consequences, they will believe not in Grand Qur'aan. Grand Qur'aan is primarily for those who have the minimum level of rationality—the basic instinct of mind shared by humanity that says everything needs an explanation why it is. This is the minimum, basic, primary qualification and level of rationality that must be present to render the cautioning, alarming, admonition effective:

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that transcend current frames of reference. Guided by conceptual analyses of awe as a collective emotion, across 5 studies (N 2,078) we tested the hypothesis that awe can result in a diminishment of the individual self and its concerns, and increase pro-social behavior. In a representative national sample (Study 1), dispositional tendencies to experience awe predicted greater generosity in an economic game above and beyond other prosocial emotions (e.g., compassion). In follow-up experiments, inductions of awe (relative to various control states) increased ethical decision-making (Study 2), generosity (Study 3), and prosocial values (Study 4). Finally, a naturalistic induction of awe in which participants stood in a grove of towering trees enhanced prosocial helping behavior and decreased entitlement compared to participants in a control condition (Study 5). Mediational data demonstrate that the effects of awe on pro-sociality are explained, in part, by feelings of a small self. These findings indicate that awe may help situate individuals within broader social contexts and enhance collective concern.

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that defy one’s accustomed frame of reference in some domain (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). People typically experience awe in response to asocial stimuli like natural wonders, panoramic views, and beautiful art. Why, then, would awe pr

Being cautious is the state of mind accompanied by fear and doubt. On the other hand being careful is also a state of mind that is not accompanied by fear and doubt. This is the major difference between the words ‘careful’ and ‘cautious’.

One of the primary differences between careful and cautious is that cautious is a kind of emotion, qualified by a touch of fear too. You can call cautious as a fear based emotion. On the other hand careful is not a fear based emotion. In fact careful is more of an action.

Cautious is the state of mind accompanied by fear and doubt.

Careful is related with confidence while being more involved.

fear fright dread terror horror panic alarm dismay consternation trepidation 

Great agitation and anxiety caused by the expectation or the realization of danger:

As adjectives the difference between apprehensive and cautious

regardful: showing or feeling regard or esteem; respectful.

to have a reverential awe of <fear God>

1. intransitive verb

2. :  to be afraid or apprehensive

MacLean viewed the brain as a triune architecture15. The first part is the evolutionarily ancient reptilian brain (the striatal complex and basal ganglia), which he saw as the seat of primitive emotions such as fear and aggression. The second part is the ‘old’ mammalian brain (which he originally called the ‘visceral brain’), which augments primitive reptilian emotional responses such as fear and also elaborates the social emotions. This brain system includes many of the components of the Papez circuit — the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus and cingulate cortex — along with important additional structures, in particular the amygdala and the PFC. Finally, the ‘new’ mammalian brain consists mostly of the neocortex, which interfaces emotion with cognition and exerts top–down control over the emotional responses that are driven by other systems. MacLean’s essential idea was that emotional experiences involve the integration of sensations from the world with information from the body

The amygdala and fear conditioning. In fear conditioning, meaningless stimuli come to acquire fear-inducing properties when they occur in conjunction with a naturally threatening event such as an electric shock

MacLean viewed the brain as a triune architecture15. The first part is the evolutionarily ancient reptilian brain (the striatal complex and basal ganglia), which he saw as the seat of primitive emotions such as fear and aggression. The second part is the ‘old’ mammalian brain (which he originally called the ‘visceral brain’), which augments primitive reptilian emotional responses such as fear and also elaborates the social emotions. This brain system includes many of the components of the Papez circuit — the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus and cingulate cortex — along with important additional structures, in particular the amygdala and the PFC. Finally, the ‘new’ mammalian brain consists mostly of the neocortex, which interfaces emotion with cognition and exerts top–down control over the emotional responses that are driven by other systems. MacLean’s essential idea was that emotional experiences involve the integration of sensations from the world with information from the body

He held the view that emotion implies behavior (expression) and feeling (experience, subjective aspects). Expression depends on the hypothalamus, and experience on the cortex. 

Many authors, however, have argued that differences in their etiologies, response patterns, time courses, and intensities seem to justify a clear distinction between anxiety and fear.¹⁵Although both are alerting signals, they appear to prepare the body for different actions. Anxiety is a generalized response to an unknown threat or internal conflict, whereas fear is focused on known external danger.¹⁵ It has been suggested that “[...] anxiety can only be understood by taking into account some of its cognitive aspects, particularly because a basic aspect of anxiety appears to be uncertainty. Also, it is reasonable to conclude that anxiety can be distinguished from fear in that the object of fear is 'real' or 'external' or 'known' or 'objective.' The origins of anxiety are unclear or uncertain

The fact that anxiety and fear are probably distinct emotional states docs not exclude some overlap in underlying brain and behavioral mechanisms. In fact, anxiety may just be a more elaborate form of fear, which provides the individual with an increased capacity to adapt and plan for the future.¹⁶ If this is the case, we can expect that part of the fear-mediating mechanisms elaborated during evolution to protect the individual from an immediate danger have been somehow “recycled” to develop the sophisticated systems required to protect us from more distant or virtual threats.

The amygdala-hypothalamus-central gray axis and fear

In all mammalian species, there are three distinct sites in the brain where electrical stimulation will provoke a full fear response: the lateral and central zones of the amygdala, the anterior and medial hypothalamus, and specific areas of the PAG. A circuit coursing from the lateral and central nuclei of the amygdala, throughout the ventral-anterior and medial hypothalamic areas, down to the mesencephalic PAG, may constitute the executive system for fear, since freezing, as well as flight behavior and the autonomic indices of fear (eg, increased heart rate and eliminative behavior) can be evoked along the whole trajectory of this system.⁴¹

HERE’S a curious fact about goose bumps. In many nonhuman mammals, goose bumps — that physiological reaction in which the muscles surrounding hair follicles contract — occur when individuals, along with other members of their species, face a threat. We humans, by contrast, can get goose bumps when we experience awe, that often-positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.

Why do humans experience awe? Years ago, one of us, Professor Keltner, argued (along with the psychologist Jonathan Haidt) that awe is the ultimate “collective” emotion, for it motivates people to do things that enhance the greater good. Through many activities that give us goose bumps — collective rituals, celebration, music and dance, religious gatherings and worship — awe might help shift our focus from our narrow self-interest to the interests of the group to which we belong.

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that defy one’s accustomed frame of reference in some domain (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). People typically experience awe in response to asocial stimuli like natural wonders, panoramic views, and beautiful art.

Fear is a feeling induced by perceived danger or threat that occurs in certain types of organisms, which causes a change in metabolic and organ functions and ultimately a change in behavior, such as fleeing, hiding, or freezing from perceived traumatic events. Fear in human beings may occur in response to a specific stimulus occurring in the present, or in anticipation or expectation of a future threat perceived as a risk to body or life. The fear response arises from the perception of danger leading to confrontation with or escape from/avoiding the threat (also known as the fight-or-flight response), which in extreme cases of fear (horror and terror) can be a freeze response or paralysis.

In humans and animals, fear is modulated by the process of cognition and learning. Thus fear is judged as rational or appropriate and irrational or inappropriate. An irrational fear is called a phobia.

As a noun "fear" can be used in three ways with different meanings: In the uncountable form fear is a strong, uncontrollable and unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger, e.g. "He was struck by fear on seeing the snake." In the countable form, and when used with the indefinite article, a "fear" means a phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone, e.g. "Not everybody has the same fears; I have a fear of ants." In an uncountable form it can also mean extreme veneration or awe, as toward a supreme being or deity.^[3]

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that defy one’s accustomed frame of reference in some domain (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). People typically experience awe in response to asocial stimuli like natural wonders, panoramic views, and beautiful art. Why, then, would awe pr

apprehensiveness: worried that something bad will happen; aware: aware or cognizant of something nonphysical such as implications or result.

Apprehensive is a synonym of afraid.

As adjectives the difference between apprehensive andafraid

131. To Fear, be Apprehensive, To Dread, be Afraid.

We fear, an ill; through a natural aversion to it, and, from a sense, that it may happen to us: we are apprehensive, of losing a benefit; through an eager desire to obtain it, and, from a conviction that we never may: we dread, our adversary; through sentiments of esteem, when we know him our superior: we are afraid of danger; through a timid disposition.

Want of courage, makes us fear: Doubt of success, makes us apprehensive. Distrust of strength, makes us dread. Imagination itself, will, often, make us afraid.

Common people fear death, more than any thing: the Epicureans were, much more, in fear of pain; but gentlemen, are of opinion, they ought to fear nothing, so much as infamy. The more, ardently, we wish for a thing, the more we apprehend the losing of it. Whatever merit, an author may flatter himself that he has, he should always dread the judgment of the public. Women, who are afraid of nothing, but losing their reputation; do honour to their sex.

squeeze humbly

scary

HERE’S a curious fact about goose bumps. In many nonhuman mammals, goose bumps — that physiological reaction in which the muscles surrounding hair follicles contract — occur when individuals, along with other members of their species, face a threat. We humans, by contrast, can get goose bumps when we experience awe, that often-positive feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.

Why do humans experience awe? Years ago, one of us, Professor Keltner, argued (along with the psychologist Jonathan Haidt) that awe is the ultimate “collective” emotion, for it motivates people to do things that enhance the greater good. Through many activities that give us goose bumps — collective rituals, celebration, music and dance, religious gatherings and worship — awe might help shift our focus from our narrow self-interest to the interests of the group to which we belong.

As a concept, awe has been around for centuries, surfacing in discussions of religion and philosophy among such eminent thinkers as Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But as APS Fellows Dacher Keltner (University of California, Berkeley) and Jonathan Haidt (New York University) observed in a seminal 2003 paper, the psychological dimensions of awe haven’t received the kind of scrutiny given to other emotions.

 As Keltner and Haidt observed, awe-inspiring experiences “may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth” (2003, p. 12), given that our personality traits and values tend to be difficult to change.

In mapping out the structure and function of the emotion, Keltner and Haidt proposed two essential aspects shared by experiences of awe: vastness and need for accommodation.

Findings from a 2013 study coauthored by APS Fellow Michelle “Lani” Shiota (Arizona State University), Keltner, and Belinda Campos showed that, in marked contrast to other positive emotions, awe isn’t signaled by smiling but rather by raised eyebrows, widened eyes, a dropped jaw, and visible inhalation. These jaw-dropping, breath-taking displays of awe could help to enhance visual perception and moderate physiological arousal, thereby facilitating the complex cognitive processing induced by an awe-inspiring stimulus.

But why do we experience awe at all? Keltner and Haidt hypothesized that, from an evolutionary perspective, awe may reflect the fundamental emotional response that low-rank group members have in the presence of a powerful group leader. Such a deferential, submissive response has clear advantages in terms of ensuring one’s place in a group and maintaining social hierarchies that can boost long-term chances of survival. Over time, this emotional response to powerful beings generalized to other powerful and vast stimuli, including the man-made, the natural, and the supernatural.

But other findings suggest that awe also may be linked to religiosity and spirituality through another form of appraisal: uncertainty.

Psychology researchers Piercarlo Valdesolo (Claremont McKenna College) and Jesse Graham (University of Southern California) wondered whether people might resolve this feeling of uncertainty by invoking intentional or purposeful agents. Their findings, published in Psychological Science in 2014, showed that students who watched a video of awe-inducing nature scenes reported stronger belief in supernatural control and stronger belief in God than did those who watched either a comedic or emotionally neutral video. A second experiment revealed that this relationship was mediated by participants’ intolerance for uncertainty.

 We found that awe helps bind us to others, motivating us to act in collaborative ways that enable strong groups and cohesive communities.

Why do humans experience awe? Years ago, one of us, Professor Keltner,argued (along with the psychologist Jonathan Haidt) that awe is the ultimate “collective” emotion, for it motivates people to do things that enhance the greater good. Through many activities that give us goose bumps — collective rituals, celebration, music and dance, religious gatherings and worship — awe might help shift our focus from our narrow self-interest to the interests of the group to which we belong.

Chemistry of fear

A new video put out by the science organization offers a concise explanation of the reactions in the body that cause those reactions -- and it all comes down to chemistry.

"Fear is the expectation or the anticipation of possible harm ... We know that the body is highly sensitive to the possibility of threat, so there are multiple pathways that bring that fear information into the brain," explained Abigail Marsh, associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University.

Imagine the following scenario: you’re watching TV late at night, when you hear a crash from the porch. An intruder? A spook? Tentacled alien?

“The nerves in your ears that transduce that sound are the first part of the nervous system,” Marsh said. That signal is relayed to the thalamus, a telephone switching station in your brain, and then directly to the amygdala, which releases neurotransmitters throughout the body -- notably glutamate, essentially the chemical behind fear.

“The actions of glutamate in the amygdala in response to the fearful thing you’ve heard set off this cascade of other responses,” Marsh explained.

A reciprocal response comes from an area of the brain called the “periaqueductal gray,” a region deep within the ancient brain that controls two classic responses to fear: jumping and freezing. Sound familiar? The hypothalamus controls the fight or flight responses -- increased heart rate and so on.

A signal sent to the adrenal glands in your torso causes them to send out cortisol and adrenaline. The fear response also a release of glucose into the bloodstream -- a power up to get you running for your life.

Depending on the level of risk, the body regulates the response from these various systems to control whether we fight, freeze -- or flee like scared little kids we all are.