When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
​
Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
What gets more charity donation?
Ogilvy and Mather, the renowned advertising company, was working with a charity to increase charity donations.
Once a year, the charity would drop printed envelopes through millions of doors in Britain soliciting donations and return a few weeks later to collect them. That year, charity donations were being collected for hurricane relief. They were able to do so as they had a very large pool of volunteers.
​
Ogilvy and Mather's strong behavioural science unit suspected that unexpected factors beyond good intentions influenced donation rates. And so they tried a cheeky experiment. Some envelopes were randomly different from the rest;
​
-
100,000 envelopes had an additional notice that delivery was made by volunteers;
-
100,000 came with an additional form that would provide a 25 per cent tax rebate;
-
100,000 were in better-quality envelopes; and
-
100,000 were in portrait orientation (where the opening of the envelope is along the short side rather than the long side)
-
the rest of the envelopes were as per normal, acting as a control group.
​​
Which method do you think worked the best? Take a guess
.png)
1. Additional notice that donation envelopes were delivered by volunteers
3. Better quality envelopes
2. 25% tax rebate
4. Portrait envelopes (the ones on the left) as opposed to the traditional landscape envelopes (those on the right)
Most people would have guessed that method 2 would be the most effective. A smaller number might believe it is method 1.
-
Method 2 is the most tangible - it reminds the donor of an additional tangible benefit from donating - a tax relief
-
Method 1 has an emotional element - everyone coming together in different ways for charity - the donor with money while the volunteers with their time and effort.
​
And the results?
​
Well, it is not quite what we expect. Those scheming marketers at Ogilvy do have pretty good hunches after all.
Method 2, what seemed the most logical, performed the worst. It received 30% less donations than the control group.
All other methods were similar in results, all outperforming the control group by slightly over 10%, with the better quality envelopes slightly edging out the other two methods.
The better quality envelopes also had one other interesting characteristic: It attracted fewer overall donors, but a significantly higher number of larger donations above £100.
​
In this site, we discuss extensively how a person's behaviour is shaped by a large number of factors, far beyond what we are conscious of. We like to think of ourselves as logical, intentioned beings, but we really aren't. In this case, it seems pretty ridiculous that the donation rate can be effectively encouraged by the quality and shape of the envelope, comparing favourably with emotional and tangible reasons. What has the envelope got to do with anything?
​
It turns out that our brains make many decisions every day. It's tiring, and practically quite impossible to think through every single decision comprehensively. To help us, we try to find heuristics, simple indicators that help us make a quick and reasonably-accurate decision so that we can move on with our lives. In this case, the envelope shape and quality are heuristics which trigger our brains into making a decision subconsciously:
-
The more expensive envelope carries a signalling effect, that the other party is willing to invest more for an important issue
-
The portrait envelope is far less common than the normal landscape envelopes and letters we (still) receive, which catches our attention more
Read more about:
​
- What affects human behaviour?
- The subconscious human brain
- We want to make decisions quickly rather than accurately
- Do I buy something because it is easier to buy?
- What is most effective in encouraging people to reuse their hotel towels?