Why Is Fear Important To Human Survival

Fear is a complex emotion that can have both positive and negative influences on people’s lives. On the one hand fear can cause stress, oppress people’s happiness, and hold them back in life, and therefore many people see fear as a bad thing. On the other hand fear is also very useful, because it serves as a tool for survival. Fear is an emotion that warns people in situations of danger or threat and it helps to form a proper response in these situations. In this essay I will argue that although fear can have negative influences on people it still is a necessity for human survival, and I will use the movie It Follows as an example to show that the ability to fear something, even though this thing is understood, is needed in order to form a

Good fear is essential to human survival because it serves as a warning system in dangerous situations. In his article “The defense system of fear: behavior and neurocircuitry” Dr. René Misslin describes the function of fear as follows: “[f]ear can be conceived as a functional defense behavior system representing a part of the innate species-specific behavioral repertoire, basic to the survival of individuals and species. Its function is to protect living beings against dangerous, threatening and aversive situations” (55). So if a person ends up in a dangerous situation the fear response will warn him and in addition generate appropriate behavioral responses, and in this way the fear response contributes to survival. The two most common responses in a situation of danger are to fight or to flee. This reaction is generally known as the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response enables the body to either forcefully fight or flight in a dangerous situation. The term was introduced by American physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon in his book Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage and he describes it as the “physiological responses of an organism confronted with a situation that evokes fear, pain, or anger, such responses being mobilized by the secretion of adrenalin (epinephrine) from the adrenal medulla, preparing the organism to fight or to flee” (Oxford Reference). Amongst these responses are the increase in heart and blood pressure, the dilation of pupils and the shutdown of nonessential systems to allow more energy for emergency functions (HowStuffWorks). All of these processes that are set in motion by the fight-or-flight response are intended to help you survive a dangerous situation. Thus fear and the subsequent fight-or-flight response are essential to