The ethological deconstruction of fear(s)

Publication date: December 2018 Source:Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 24 Author(s): Dean Mobbs The natural world presents a myriad of dangers that can threaten an organism's survival. This diversity of threats is matched by a set of universal and species specific defensive behaviors which are often subsumed under the emotions of fear and anxiety. A major issue in the field of affective science, however, is that these emotions are often conflated and scientists fail to reflect the ecological conditions that gave rise to them. I attempt to clarify these semantic issues by describing the link between ethologically defined defensive strategies and fear. This in turn, provides a clearer differentiation between fears, the contexts that evoke them and how they are organized within defensive survival circuits.

Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - March 21, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research