The 5 most stupid human fears that have a scientific basis

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

What man is not afraid of: spiders, darkness, scary clowns. Most of our fears are of an irrational nature - we are not aware of their cause. However, evolutionary theory has proven that many of our phobias are not as unfounded as we think.

1. Dolls

Creepy children's toys have long been the heroes of various horror films. However, many people experience anxiety at the sight of dolls, even if they do not have a knife in their hand, like Chucky in Children's Game.

What is the reason for this fear? It's about the evolutionary mechanisms of our brain. People, in principle, tend to find human images even where they are not. Suffice it to recall at least the famous illusion of a face on the moon. This tendency to find human faces in everything is called pareidolia. And this is a very important skill from the point of view of evolution.

First, the mother's face is one of the first and most important visual images that a newborn baby encounters. Secondly, the earlier the caveman noticed the enemy sneaking towards him with a stick in his hand, the more chances he had to survive.

A fairly large area is allocated for face recognition in the human brain. And when it starts to idle, we get unpleasant feelings. Until the dolls became too realistic and their faces began to resemble human ones, there was no such problem as pediophobia (fear of dolls). However, modern toys, which are visually almost indistinguishable from a person, and in fact are not people, cause in us a clash of an unconscious instinct that says "run or interact" with a clear understanding of the inanimate object. This is what causes the discomfort at the sight of anthropomorphic toys.

2. Clowns

There is something really creepy about guys with huge red noses and unnaturally large feet. Popular media images of giggling psychopaths immediately come to mind. However, it was not mass culture that gave rise to this fear.

A 2008 study by British scientists examined the reaction of children in hospital to posters of clowns hung on the walls. It turned out that the children found this environment far from comfortable. Moreover, they admitted that the posters were intimidating. Thus, the appearance of merry people with red noses from birth causes us a feeling of anxiety.

Why? There is too much unnatural in the appearance of the clown. Contrasting colors on the face, hanging clothes, unreasonable laughter - all this is enough for our brain to decide: “Something is wrong here. Not at all!"

All this is pretty obvious, but it's amazing how these terrible creatures can cause a short circuit in the brain with one movement of the hand, because of which he suddenly decides to laugh! Their entire image, from their appearance and ending with rather cruel actions towards themselves or others, does not have any funny features from the point of view of the social code. It remains a mystery why clowns are the embodiment of both laughter and horror at the same time.

3. Spiders and snakes

Unless you live in Australia or the Amazonian lowlands, you have little reason to fear snakes and spiders. However, earlier, when people did not yet have homes and opportunities for self-defense, these creatures could cause a lot of trouble.

Scientists showed three-year-old children various photographs, several of which showed reptiles and spiders. Even those of the children who have not met them in life reacted in a special way to the images of these creatures. For completeness of the experiment, the same was done with seven month old children. The result was similar: the subjects were afraid of the snakes.

However, research has shown that we do not have an instinctive fear of these animals. It's just that evolution has given us the ability to recognize which creatures are dangerous and which are not. In the laboratory, monkeys can be trained to fear spiders and snakes much faster than rabbits. Most likely, because the latter do not tend to carry poison in themselves.

4. Items with many holes

If you are afraid of the sight of honeycombs or corals, then most likely you have trypophobia. This strange phenomenon is defined as a fear of cluster holes, that is, clusters of holes. There is still no scientific evidence for the reality of this phobia, but seeing the following image, many readers will surely feel discomfort.

This seems rather odd. Why on earth would a person be afraid of holes? What is it about them? Again, the answer is given by evolutionary theory. Holes in objects remind us of dangerous animals like the octopus. Our ancestors had to go to sea for food, where they could easily meet some kind of poisonous blue-ringed octopus.

Scientists have found that people with trypophobia react particularly strongly to holes that have high contrast at small distances between elements. It can also characterize the appearance of some dangerous animals like king cobra and scorpion. Therefore, do not be too hard on yourself if you scream in fear at the sight of Swiss cheese: you just have a strong survival instinct.

5. Grinding of nails on the board

Agree, the sound of nails scraping on a chalkboard is one of the most disgusting in the world. Why is he so unpleasant to us?

Scientists claim that the frequency of sound at which a person experiences unpleasant sensations is in the range of 2,000-4,000 Hz. It's all about the structure of the ear canal: it is organized in such a way that sounds with the named frequency are significantly amplified.

The effect here is not only psychological, because sounds can affect our blood pressure and speed up our heartbeat. Why is our body so arranged? Perhaps this is another "gift" of evolution, which taught us to pay attention to cries for help or crying of a child.