ORIGINAL: meef rustler
AP biology and AP psychology. I've actually done a project on where fear comes from. We get fear from observing. When that spider bites you or someone else you may develop a fear of it. Many fears come from tv and movies. Why do you think people fear ''ghosts''? Amphibians do not fear ghosts. Explain how you pass a concept through genetics. Learning fear is a trait for survival, because having fears keeps us safe. But you are not born fearing things. Someone locked in a box from birth to death would fear nothing, because they have not been exposed. Therefore, they have not learned to fear anything.
There have also been studies that have shown that certain frequencies of sound can stimulate a portion of the brain the makes the person feel anxiety or dread/fear. These frequencies are the same as the ones generated by large cats when they growl, as well as sounds made by other large mammals. People can experience these feelings of dread without ever hearing a large cat, then being introduced to the sound. Fear is entirely chemical, and is generated by a protein called stathmin. Genetic predisposition is a proven fact.