Among spiders, heights and clowns, the world can seem like a scary place. Halloween has passed, but fears always find a way to creep into our minds.
Amy Halberstadt, a professor of psychology, flushed out what exactly a fear is and hypothesized what exactly might set off someone’s fear factor.
“Before you know anything about fear, you have to know how to identify one,” Halberstadt said. “There’s an identifiable eliciting stimulus. Usually people who are afraid try to either freeze or get away, and it’s often associated with having a lack of power.”
Halberstadt said that recognizable expressions such as heat to the face, flushing, shallow breathing and heart palpitation are just a few of the things our body uses to let us know we’re afraid.
“Personally, I think we construct some of our fears,” Halberstadt said. “We have some innate fears, but also many of our fears that we may think are innate are actually constructed or taught to us.”
According to Halberstadt, there are certain temperamental characteristics that make us more prone to be fearful.
“We have some people being more cautious than others in their approach to things,” Halberstadt said. “That could be a way in which people who are less open and willing to approach things might become more fearful in a certain circumstance. More often than not, people are socialized into being more fearful.”
Halberstadt said TV shows regarding crime are just one example of people being socialized into a fear.
“Crime has actually gone down, but on TV it’s being maintained at a very high level. So the more you watch those things on TV, the more likely you are going to be worried about crime,” Halberstadt said. “We can see that our fears are sometimes very much cultivated by culture.”
Though worry and fear may seem interchangeable, they are actually separate emotions, according to Halberstadt.
“While fear deals with having a lack of power and fight or flight, worry is a more broader and vaguer term. It’s much closer to anxiety,” Halberstadt said. “Worry is not a specific eliciting stimulus like fear, but more than likely a worry can develop into a fear.”
Ethan Thompson, a freshman in psychology, said watching various documentaries and horror movies about the unexplored ocean was the beginning of his worries.
“I am terrified of being in the open ocean,” Thompson said. “I started to worry after watching films about the abundance of life in the ocean that we haven’t even discovered yet. Now I can’t even handle being in the ocean.”
Thompson said he isn’t afraid of other bodies of water, but “with the ocean, there’s no telling what’s beneath the surface.”
Jackson Roberts, a sophomore in communication, said worrying about wearing contacts developed into a full-fledged fear.
“I feel like if somehow I was able to touch my eye long enough to get one in, I wouldn’t have the courage to be able to get it back out,” Roberts said. “Sitting at the eye doctor for an hour trying to get the contacts in resulted in nothing but induced and reactionary tears. The fact of having something foreign on my body that I can’t control disturbs me.”
John Walsh, a sophomore in engineering, said his fear of dogs and wolves began with an incident that occurred as a child.
“I remember when I was four or five being at some party my parents were invited to,” Walsh said. “One girl brought out her dog, which kept escaping its leash and running around. At one point, the dog decided to start jumping near me and knock me down [while] nibbling at me.
The adults look over and start talking about how cute the scene was until I let out a blood-curling scream when the dog bit me multiple times.”
According to Walsh, that experience was the first of many that contributed to solidifying his fear.
“After being knocked over again by a dog in the park, I remember on the car ride home my parents playing, ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ on cassette,” Walsh said. “Right as we arrived home, we shut the car off at the point in the song where Peter is cornered by the wolf.”
Walsh said that at the age of 20, he’s still trying to overcome his fear.
“I volunteer at the Wake County SCPA,” Walsh said. “I’m no longer a little boy that widens his eyes and hides when I see a larger dog, but I still get chills knowing that I’m a proud member of the Wolfpack.”