Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, real or not. Fear also can be described as a feeling of extreme dislike to some conditions/objects, such as: fear of darkness, fear of ghosts, etc. It is one of the basic emotions. A feeling can refer to: sensation related to one of several senses (tactition, thermoception, nociception, equilibrioception, proprioception); See also: touch, qualia emotion; intuition; Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, feeling means you tend to put a higher priority on personal factors than impersonal factors; Feelings, the name of a 1997 David Byrne... Risk is the potential harm that may arise from some present process or from some future event. ... Darkness is my precious companion. ... Reputed ghost of a monk. ... Emotions are essentially impulses that move an organism to action, originating automatic reaction behavior which has been perfected through evolution as a survival need. ...

Fear may underlie some phenomena of behavior modification, although these phenomena can be explained without adducing fear as a factor in them. Furthermore, application of aversive stimuli is also often ineffective in producing change in the behaviour intended to be changed. Fearing objects or contexts can be learned; in animals this is being studied as fear conditioning, which depends on the emotional circuitry of the brain. Behavior (or behaviour in Commonwealth English) refers to the actions or reactions of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. ... Fear conditioning is the method by which organisms learn to fear new stimuli. ... Emotions are essentially impulses that move an organism to action, originating automatic reaction behavior which has been perfected through evolution as a survival need. ... Comparative brain sizes In the anatomy of animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the higher, supervisory center of the nervous system. ...

Fear inside a person has different degrees and varies from one person to another (see also phobia). If not properly handled, fear can lead to social problems. People who experience intense fear have been known to commit irrational and/or dangerous acts. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Some philosophers have considered fear to be a useless emotion with uniformly bad consequences; other thinkers note the usefulness of fear as a warning of bad situations.

Degrees of fear

Fear can be described by different terms in accordance with its relative degrees. Fear covers a number of terms - terror, fright, paranoia, horror, persecution complex and dread. For the state of pronounced fear, see terror. ... In popular culture, the term paranoia is usually used to describe excessive concern about ones own well-being, sometimes suggesting a person holds persecutory beliefs concerning a threat to themselves or their property and is often linked to a belief in conspiracy theories. ... Horror is the feeling of dread and anticipation that usually occurs before something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. ... A persecution complex is a term given to an array of psychologically complex behaviours, that specifically deals with the perception of being persecuted, for various possible reasons. ... Emotion: See Angst Also the name for a revolutionary new weapons system, called DREAD. This is a new system that uses a rotating drum or wheel to spin spherical projectiles up to a high speed, in the same way as a candy floss machine, only with slightly more lethality. ...

Distrust

A mild stage of fear, more like caution than fear. A lack of trust in an object or person. For example, having mistrust in a rickety old bridge across a 10,000ft drop.

Paranoia

Paranoia is a term used to describe a psychosis of fear, related to perception of being persecuted. This perception often causes one to change their normal behaviour in radical ways, after time their behavior may become extremely compulsive.

Terror

See also: terrorism Terrorism is the unconventional use of violence for political gain. ...

Terror refers to a pronounced state of fear, where someone becomes overwhelmed with a sense of immediate danger.

Expression

Facial

In fear, ones eyes widen and the upper lip rises. The brows draw together and the lips stretch horizontally.

Cause of fear

See also: mass hysteria In psychology collective hysteria is the name given to a phenomenon of the manifestation of the same hysterical symptoms by more than one person. ...

The causes of fear can vary to a surprising degree; fear is to a certain extent a "cultural artefact" (Clifford Geertz). In 19th century Britain, one of the biggest fears was of dying poor, unmourned, unremembered, and possibly ending up on an anatomist's dissection table. By the early twentieth century, this had given way to a fear of being buried alive, to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements to ensure this would be avoided (eg glass lids, for observation, and breathing pipes, for survival until rescued). During the Second World War, fear of death by bombing was much less than during World War I, even though many more bombs fell; air wardens would complain of civilians continuing to gossip on street corners instead of taking shelter. Similarly, when cars were new, fear of them was such that for a time the law required a man with a red flag to walk in front of it to warn the public; today, tens of thousands die in road accidents each year yet governments struggle to instill a real fear of drunk driving or speeding. Clifford James Geertz (born August 23, 1926 in San Francisco) is an American anthropologist serving as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. ... Greek anatome, from ana-temnein, to cut up), is the branch of biology that deals with the structure and organization of living things; thus there is animal anatomy (zootomy) and plant anatomy (phytonomy). ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb. ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machine guns, and poison gas. ... Drunk driving (drink driving in the UK) or drinking and driving is the act of operating a motor vehicle after having consumed alcohol (i. ... A speed limit is the maximum speed allowed by law by vehicles on a road. ...

In 2005, University of Toronto researchers traced the origin of memories to the prefrontal cortex of the brain.[1] Founded in 1827, the University of Toronto (U of T), in Toronto, Ontario, is the largest university in Canada. ... // Location and Function The prefrontal cortex is the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, lying in front of the motor and associative areas. ...

Further reading

• Joanna Bourke (2005), Fear: a cultural history, Virago
• Corey Robin (2004), Fear: the history of a political idea, Oxford University Press
• Duenwald, Mary. "The Psychology of ...Facial Expressions" Discovery Magazine Vol. 26 NO. 1

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Fear

• Angst
• Phobia
• Appeal to fear
• Culture of fear
• Shame
• Guilt
• Freud

Image File history File links i would like to see some quotations by or about goebbels. ... Wikiquote logo Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ... Angst is a German, Dutch and nordic word for fear or anxiety. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... An appeal to fear (also called argumentum ad metum or argumentum in terrorem) is a logical fallacy in which a person attempts to create support for his or her idea by playing on existing fears and prejudices. ... Culture of fear is a term proposed in a variety of sociological theses, which argue that feelings of fear and anxiety predominate in contemporary public discourse and relationships, changing how we relate to one another as individuals and as democratic agents. ... Shame is a social condition and a form of social control consisting of an emotional state and a set of behaviors, caused by the consciousness or awareness of having acted inappropriately. ... Guilt is a word describing many concepts related to a negative emotion or condition caused by actions which are, or are believed to be, morally wrong. ... Sigmund Freud His famous couch Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. ...

External links

• Quotations on Fear
• A Buddhist View on Fear