Fear of ghosts

[Thomas]

Re: Fear of the dark

Opinions differ, but fear of the dark may be hard-wired into us. No complicated explanation is necessary, either: back in Africa, long before anybody dreamed up ghosts or demons, our ancestors had damn good reason to be afraid in the dark. Leopards! Lions! Hyenas!

That sounds like a point that would be well supported by evolutionary psychology. People who have had this fear by psychological adaption, would have had a better chance of survival, and therefore reproduction, all the way back to our most primitive ancestors.

]Originally posted by sackett

My four year old son has a fear of spiders. Not massive, but he doesn't like them at all. Neither I nor my wife are bothered by spiders (at least not the UK varieties) and handle them frequently in front of him. He has not seem programs about scary spiders as far as I know and has never been harmed in any way by any insect or arachnid.

Why is he scared of spiders?

Same answer as above. People who didn't have fear of spiders and snakes had a lower chance of survival and reproduction than those who had. Since many of these animals were quite toxic and very often lethal.
This is again a psychological adaption that may date back to our most primitive ancestors. Remember that neither you or your wife would have to have this adaption for your son to get it. Adaptions can easily skip generations. Infact, the answer to this fear-of-spiders question, is a textbook example in evolutionary psychology.

However, reason can often suppress psychological adaptions more or less.


/thomas

 

[SquishyDave]

Re: Re: Fear of the dark

Same answer as above. People who didn't have fear of spiders and snakes had a lower chance of survival and reproduction than those who had. Since many of these animals were quite toxic and very often lethal.
This is again a psychological adaption that may date back to our most primitive ancestors. Remember that neither you or your wife would have to have this adaption for your son to get it. Adaptions can easily skip generations. Infact, the answer to this fear-of-spiders question, is a textbook example in evolutionary psychology.

I don't think that's true, kids who have not been taught to fear spiders and snakes, don't.

I saw some playing quite happily with both species. We don't seem to have an inherit fear of any animal. As for an inherit fear of the dark, it might be learned too I don't know. Evolving in Africa would have left very few species to be afraid of, and in fact, fearing a spider or snake could end up killing you of starvation, as with our superior hands and brains catching even a venemous one would have been fairly easy, and most spiders and snakes merely leave us humans sick as a dog for a while, not kill us.

I thought what I read somewhere was that some people are more prone to develope a phobia about anything. What they fear is entirely dependant on what they are taught to fear, they just are better at learning the fear.

 

[Thomas]

Re: Re: Re: Fear of the dark

I don't think that's true, kids who have not been taught to fear spiders and snakes, don't.

I saw some playing quite happily with both species. We don't seem to have an inherit fear of any animal. As for an inherit fear of the dark, it might be learned too I don't know. Evolving in Africa would have left very few species to be afraid of, and in fact, fearing a spider or snake could end up killing you of starvation, as with our superior hands and brains catching even a venemous one would have been fairly easy, and most spiders and snakes merely leave us humans sick as a dog for a while, not kill us.

I thought what I read somewhere was that some people are more prone to develope a phobia about anything. What they fear is entirely dependant on what they are taught to fear, they just are better at learning the fear.

That would have to be tested wouldn't it. I think it's a mixture of both, since adaptions skip generations. We already know from animals that they have natural fears for several things without any of them could ever have been told to beware. Some birds for example, have natural fears for birds of prey from the minute they are born. There are several examples of this among various animals, I find it hard to belive we should be any diffrent at the bottom. It's most likely a mixture of phobia and basic instincts.

Being sick 'as a dog for while' as you say, could easily kill our most primitive ancestors before we started to take care of eachother. For the 'die of starvation' example, this is what would happen to you if didn't have anyone to get you food in the hunter/gather-society and we're lying sick and alone.

For new adaptions to take place or get switched in the human race, it is estimated that 20.000 - 200.000 years (about 1000 - 10.000 generations) is what we need depending on the given adaption. And since fear of spiders and snakes don't have any influence on your possibilty to reproduce in the society we have today, these adaptions might never go away. To conclude this, we would have to place a snake or a spider in front of several diffrent babies and watch their individual reactions, the rest is just speculations, I personally think more of the power of evolution, than I do of freudian nonsense like: You fear spiders because they look like your mother etc. Anyway, if you ever hear of such an experiment, be sure to let me now.


/thomas

 

[Blondin]

When I'm tucked up all snug in my bed with all the lights out I fear no ghosties because I know the monster under the bed will get them before they can get me.

 

[SquishyDave]

Re: Fear of the dark

That would have to be tested wouldn't it. I think it's a mixture of both, since adaptions skip generations. We already know from animals that they have natural fears for several things without any of them could ever have been told to beware. Some birds for example, have natural fears for birds of prey from the minute they are born. There are several examples of this among various animals, I find it hard to belive we should be any diffrent at the bottom. It's most likely a mixture of phobia and basic instincts.

Being sick 'as a dog for while' as you say, could easily kill our most primitive ancestors before we started to take care of eachother. For the 'die of starvation' example, this is what would happen to you if didn't have anyone to get you food in the hunter/gather-society and we're lying sick and alone.

For new adaptions to take place or get switched in the human race, it is estimated that 20.000 - 200.000 years (about 1000 - 10.000 generations) is what we need depending on the given adaption. And since fear of spiders and snakes don't have any influence on your possibilty to reproduce in the society we have today, these adaptions might never go away. To conclude this, we would have to place a snake or a spider in front of several diffrent babies and watch their individual reactions, the rest is just speculations, I personally think more of the power of evolution, than I do of freudian nonsense like: You fear spiders because they look like your mother etc. Anyway, if you ever hear of such an experiment, be sure to let me now.


/thomas

As far as I know, we always lived as group animals, I am not sure how this translated to being looked after, but the current theory is that humans have this big brain because we evolved in a complex social group. But again, most spiders are so far beyond harmless it's not funny, I just don't see how a dozen slightly harmful creatures would impose enough pressure to cause us to have to evolve to fear them. World wide, there is only 30 spiders that can cause us to be sick, and we didn't evolve world wide, I am not sure out of that many are actually deadly, I know of only 2 really, the funnel-web in Australia, and the black widow, even the redback in Australia only can kill the old and very young, healthy adults just get pain and sickness for a few days.

As for being studied, I saw a show quite a while ago, which is what I'm basing my statements on, they seemed to indicate that humans had no inbuilt fear of animals. I understand that other animals certainly have inbuilt fears, but humans seem to be learning creatures. As I already mentioned this show indicated that being susceptible to a fear is certainly inbuilt, but what that particular fear is going to be is learned.

Any more than that and I can't really comment, the show was a long time ago, and we all know how crappy our memories are, I guess one of us is just going to have to look this up, it would be me, but I'm too lazy. And if you can't be bothered either I quite understand.

That show made sense to me is all, because there are so many people who aren't scared of snakes and spiders at all, and so many that are scared of perfectly harmless things, likes rats, and thunderstorms, it made sense we just learn fears. But any evidence otherwise, will of course change my mind.

 

[Thomas]

Re: Re: Fear of the dark

That show made sense to me is all, because there are so many people who aren't scared of snakes and spiders at all, and so many that are scared of perfectly harmless things, likes rats, and thunderstorms, it made sense we just learn fears. But any evidence otherwise, will of course change my mind.

If I stumble over any tests concerning this, I'll post them in here on these boards so we can have a little debate about it. Untill then we're just gonna have to wait I guess. I agree that we learn certain things, even fear. To distinguish between evolutionary adapted fears and memorized fears is difficult, only several tests can answer that question. I belive it differs from person to person because of generation skips and mutations. Till then, I'm quite satisfied with this sarcastic scenario:

The Evolution of Man


/thomas

 

[Batman Jr.]

Thomas,

Sadly, most people wouldn't fit into the human archetype presented in the cartoon.

 

[SquishyDave]

I am now raising this thread from death, I saw another show just the other night on humans and fear.

This show indicated that it is accepted in the scientific world that humans have an inbuilt fear of two, and only two things, heights, and separation. They said studies with young kiddies showed no fear of any animal, and the fear of heights only came along at 6 months old.

Is it time for me to sing the "I was right" song?

Probably, but I will throw you a bone here, they conducted a test on Rhesus (sp?) monkies. They had captive monkies who had no fear of snakes at all, they put food near a snake and the monkies yummed it up. They brought in a wild monkey, and put it's food near a snake and the monkey went apesh*t in it's cage and wouldn't go near the snake and acted all scared. They then showed a video of this to the captive monkies and they learned from watching this video to fear the snake, and they from then on went crazy when they saw the snake. OK, the tricky bit of this is that they digitally replaced the snake with a flower, so it looked like the wild monkies were scared of a flower, then showed it to the captive monkies, but they developed no fear of the flower, and the captive monkies had never seen either a snake or a flower in their lives (that's what they said anyway).

Humans are not monkies, so it doesn't really apply to us, and the fact that monkies won't learn to fear something harmless through observation is all well and good, but it's clear humans learn to fear perfectly harmless things through observation, leaving an obvious behaviour gap in the two species, so perhaps I should sing that song after all.

 

[Thomas]

I am now raising this thread from death, I saw another show just the other night on humans and fear.

This show indicated that it is accepted in the scientific world that humans have an inbuilt fear of two, and only two things, heights, and separation. They said studies with young kiddies showed no fear of any animal, and the fear of heights only came along at 6 months old.

Is it time for me to sing the "I was right" song?

Somebody get that guy's guitar, and get that flower out his hair!

Probably, but I will throw you a bone here, they conducted a test on Rhesus (sp?) monkies. They had captive monkies who had no fear of snakes at all, they put food near a snake and the monkies yummed it up. They brought in a wild monkey, and put it's food near a snake and the monkey went apesh*t in it's cage and wouldn't go near the snake and acted all scared. They then showed a video of this to the captive monkies and they learned from watching this video to fear the snake, and they from then on went crazy when they saw the snake. OK, the tricky bit of this is that they digitally replaced the snake with a flower, so it looked like the wild monkies were scared of a flower, then showed it to the captive monkies, but they developed no fear of the flower, and the captive monkies had never seen either a snake or a flower in their lives (that's what they said anyway).

It's interesting that they wouldn't get scared of the flower, that indicates an adaption to make them fear certain things that are potentially dangerous, and not to fear things that are not potentially dangerous. An adapted psychological function that makes them capable of distingishing between these two things. Interesting. As someone in this thread said:

Humans are not monkies, so it doesn't really apply to us, and the fact that monkies won't learn to fear something harmless through observation is all well and good, but it's clear humans learn to fear perfectly harmless things through observation, leaving an obvious behaviour gap in the two species, so perhaps I should sing that song after all. [/B]

Rhesus monkies have a psychologic profile that matches us quite good. The pharmaceutical industry even use these monkies to test antipsychotics. I think Rhesus monkies is a good choice to get a notion of human psychology.

Thanks for sharing that info. Quite interesting. If you choose to sing that song of yours, then remember to do it to the 'psychological adaptions overrule observations, just remember the flower'-melody. It gives a perfect harmony

 

[SquishyDave]

Yeah, so I think we can agree, that all fears are learned, apart from the two mentioned.

We can then agree that humans can learn through observation to fear perfectly innocent things.....

HOWEVER, humans can learn to fear certain animals, like spiders and snakes, a hell of a lot more easily than, say fluffy clouds or baby seals.

SO

Scenario A, human baby never sees anyone fear a snake, will not fear a snake.

Scenario B, human baby sees someone fear a snake, chances good will also fear snake (being human however, can unlearn fear if motived to).

Scenario C, human baby sees someone fear baby seal, chances are worse that baby will fear seal than snake, but fear can still develope (being human however, can unlearn fear if motived to).

I think that seems to be the end result. So we were both a bit right, which is really the best way to end a discussion, everyone's happy then.

 

[Thomas]

Scenario A, human baby never sees anyone fear a snake, will not fear a snake.

In this scenario something triggers the fear of snakes, some features that a flower obviosly dont have. The strength of this trigger, will furthermore vary from individual to individual because of mutations and generation skips.

So what are these features that seperates a snake from a flower?

Well, one could make a list of features that seperates a snake from a flower. That list would contain appearence, smells and sound. Things that seperates a flower from a snake.

Ok, so there is a list of things, when joined together, will trigger a natural suspicion. Which is not found when confronted with a flower.

However, this suspicion can be suppressed by experience combined with logic, just like with humans.

In this case with the caged monkies, the natural suspicion(adaption) is suppressed by experience and logic, because all these monkies know, are a life in a cage where food is served and they never have had to fear anything.
However, had they been growing up in the wild, they would have known that their natural adapted suspicions were worth listening to from previous experience. They have never had any reason to listen to their psychological adaptions in a lab enviroment. But when they saw the monkey from the wild get terrified from the snake, their adapted natural suspicion got verified. Hence, the suppressed suspicion became the fear they naturally would have evolved in the wild.

The strength of the natural suspicion will vary from individual to individual because of mutations and generation skips, both in humans and Rhesus monkies.

The flower/snake experiment actually proved this natural suspicion adaption quite excellent. So if they tried to prove that we only learn fear by experience, and that we only have two psychological adaptions, they indeed failed.

 

[SquishyDave]

I agree that the severity will vary from person to person, and if you are saying that this inbuilt programming that makes someone more susceptible to fear snakes over baby seals is far less severe, or even non existant, in some individuals then I agree with that.

If you are saying, however, that human children will naturally be wary, but not scared, of some animals, I don't agree, that is not what the show seemed to be saying, it was saying only that we have a capability to be more easily scared by certain animals, but that it doesn't manifest in any way until we observe a certain thing, that is, someone else being scared.

Human babies show no discomfort around spiders, yet they presumably haven't been raised in a cage like a monkey, so they should have had some bad experience somewhere, unlike the monkey.

 

[Thomas]

If you are saying, however, that human children will naturally be wary, but not scared, of some animals, I don't agree, that is not what the show seemed to be saying, it was saying only that we have a capability to be more easily scared by certain animals, but that it doesn't manifest in any way until we observe a certain thing, that is, someone else being scared.

The fact remains that certain observational features given by a snake, at least, triggers a psychological adaption that a flower don't.

Human babies show no discomfort around spiders, yet they presumably haven't been raised in a cage like a monkey, so they should have had some bad experience somewhere, unlike the monkey.

For one thing, I think the brain have to be developed to a certain level before these natural suspicion adaptions will work. Like fear of heights.
Secondly, human kids don't have to learn to follow their natural suspicions when they finally have evolved, like a Rhesus monkey in the wild. It pays well to follow the natural suspicions in the wild. The same thing can hardly be said about the experiences gathered in the cradle at the day care nursery.
We learn by positive or neutral experiences not to listen to the hidden voice of evolution. Unlike a Rhesus monkey in the wild.

 

[Radek]

Re: Re: Fear of the dark

That sounds like a point that would be well supported by evolutionary psychology. People who have had this fear by psychological adaption, would have had a better chance of survival, and therefore reproduction, all the way back to our most primitive ancestors.

I remember a lecture where Lewis Binford described how some african monkeys sleep in caves (nice and cool). The problem is that some big cats come into the cave to get an easy meal. The cat has night vision, the monkeys do not, every monkey sits quietly 'hoping' the cat will not take her. The cat will only take one and go away. The point was that the same actions might be responsible for the spread of australopithecus remains we find today.
It is a bit of a chilling story and might fit what you call evolutionary psychology. That sounds a bit Lamarckian to me. Maybe fear of the dark is indeed hardwired, only because we 1. don't have night vision, 2. are highly susceptible to percieved patterns and 3. have an highly active imagination.
A wonderfull afterthought, the most dangerous non-human animal in my bedroom probably is my cat.