WHICH FEARS ARE INSTINCTUAL and Which Are Learned?
October means Halloween and the traditional party at our house. So, after getting all the party requirements, like decorations, food, drinks, scary masks, etc., I have a question: Where does fear come from? I see the jack-o’-lanterns with their grinning faces, skeletons, cobwebs, and gravestones in the yards around the neighborhood, and I think this is a question hanging in many of our minds. When you jump at the giant mechanical spider suspended above your neighbor’s garage, is that fear instinctual or is it learned? Well, I’ve done some checking, and according to the Association for Psychological Science, there are only two fears we inherit at birth: the fear of falling and the fear of loud sounds.
In the 1960s, there was a study that investigated depth perception in humans and animal species. They suspended a sheet of transparent plexiglass about 4 feet off the ground and covered one half of it with a checkerboard-pattern cloth, creating a simulated cliff. Infants, both human and animal, were then encouraged by their caregivers, usually their mothers, to crawl off the “cliff” onto the clear half of the platform. Both avoided stepping over what they perceived as a sharp drop, and pre- crawling-age infants showed heightened cardiac distress on the “suspended” side. Coupled with this innate fear of plummeting to the ground is something called the Moro reflex, one of several involuntary reflexes healthy newborn infants have at birth. Often called the “startle reflex,” it occurs
when a baby is startled by a loud sound or movement, especially a falling motion. The reflex usually triggers the newborn to lift and spread their arms as if grasping for support, followed by crying. Though the Moro reflex usually disappears at around 5 to 6 months of age, our instinctive aversion to sudden loud noises stays with us throughout our lives. So, this is what I’ve learned about fear with the help of Google. Now, it’s time for me to get back out there and set up our skeletons on the back porch. Lord knows Madge likes them to look like they’re crawling up the side of the house!
Happy Halloween!
-George
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