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Everything about Fear
Basic emotion induced by a perceived threat
Fear is an emotional state which is aroused by threatening situations. It is usually considered to be a negative, unpleasant emotion. The feeling of fear can result directly from certain kinds of sensory stimulation, such as sounds which resemble screaming. Fear can also be evoked by the anticipation that undesirable events will, or may, occur, and is useful in providing motivation to avoid or mitigate risks. It may also be the result of imagining threats to oneself or others, whether or not those threats are real or possible. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: FearA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: What is the prevalence of fear of cancer recurrence in cancer survivors and patients? A systematic review and individual participant data meta‐analysisInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: The blue castleThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change1Cited 5,612 times
- Go sideways: AmygdalaA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Fear processing in the brainA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun A strong, unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.
Noun A phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone in particular.
Noun Something one is afraid of; the object of one’s fear.
Noun Terrified veneration or reverence, particularly towards God, gods, or sovereigns.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change1
Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information.
Fear-avoidance and its consequences in chronic musculoskeletal pain: a state of the art
Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model
Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out
Differential contribution of amygdala and hippocampus to cued and contextual fear conditioning.
Development and validation of measures of social phobia scrutiny fear and social interaction anxiety11Editor’s note: This article was written before the development of some contemporary measures of social phobia, such as the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (Turner et al., 1989). We have invited this article for publication because of the growing interest in the scales described therein. S.T.
A Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) and the role of fear-avoidance beliefs in chronic low back pain and disability
🆕 Influential since 2022
What is the prevalence of fear of cancer recurrence in cancer survivors and patients? A systematic review and individual participant data meta‐analysis
Fear for the future: Eco-anxiety and health implications, a systematic review
A meta‐analysis of the associations of elements of the fear‐avoidance model of chronic pain with negative affect, depression, anxiety, pain‐related disability and pain intensity
Brain motor and fear circuits regulate leukocytes during acute stress
Dynamic landscapes of fear: understanding spatiotemporal risk
📚 Books worth reading
The blue castleLucy Maud Montgomery · 1926
MiseryStephen King · 1978
Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?Martin Waddell · 1987
FunnybonesJanet Ahlberg, Allan Ahlberg · 1980
Bedtime for FrancesRussell Hoban, Garth Williams · 1960
The Conquest of FearBasil King · 1921
The Courage of Sarah NobleAlice Dalgliesh · 1953
There's a nightmare in my cupboardMercer Mayer · 1968
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Amygdala The amygdala (/əˈmɪɡdələ/; pl.: amygdalae /əˈmɪɡdəli, -laɪ/ or amygdalas; also corpus amygdaloideum) is a paired nuclear complex present in the cerebral…
- Fear processing in the brain Many experiments have been done to find out how the brain interprets stimuli and how animals develop fear responses. The emotion, fear, has been hard-wired…
- Freezing behavior Freezing behavior, also called the freeze response or being petrified, is a reaction to specific stimuli, found in humans and commonly observed in prey…
- Fear-potentiated startle Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is a reflexive physiological reaction to a presented stimulus, and is an indicator of the fear reaction in an organism.…
- Fear conditioning Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. It is a form of learning in which an aversive…
- Effects of stress on memory The effects of stress on memory include interference with a person's capacity to encode memory and the ability to retrieve information. Stimuli, like stress…
- Avoidance learning An avoidance response is a natural adaptive behavior performed in response to danger. Excessive avoidance has been suggested to contribute to anxiety disorders…
- Phobia A phobia is an anxiety disorder, defined by an irrational, unrealistic, persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result…