Selling Fear

Brain Science:

So much of what we have been exposed to these past few weeks has been based in the basic emotion of FEAR. The Russians are dealing in fear as a weapon. The western world is dealing with the fear of world war three. We are all afraid of the consequences such as shortages of gas. It is difficult to be fearless. Here is why! Our brains are wired for fear! Below is a functional model of the brain. We will use it to explain fear.

Your amygdala, an area of your brain that helps you take in and respond to emotions, is the first to react. Your amygdale places a heavy emphasis on responding to fear. It immediately sets into motion a complex series of reactions and actions. (Higher pulse rates, accelerated breathing, hyper focus of attention, elicit sweating, slowed digestive system.) The amygdale then calls upon the hippocampus to help. (We will spend considerable time later on the hippocampus.) The job of the hippocampus is to interpret fear. Together they start producing neurochemicals and hormones that help your body to respond.

The real purpose of fear then, is to set up a streamlined response to a harmful situation. These responses bypass some main functions of the brain. An initial flight or fight response is a hardwired response in your brain. Immediate responses seem to be fleeing the situation or fighting through it. Memory and cognitive processing is at a minimum.

Overtime, though, the hippocampus tends to modify the response. It draws from the cortex new data and memory. Memory plays an important role in modifying fear. To a great extent memory over time plays a more and more important role as the hippocampus works on the amygdala.

Brain facts:

    •    We are hardwired to respond to fear..

    •    The brain responds to fear immediately though the amygdala. The emotion functional area of the brain.

    •    While it may be annoying, your flight or fight response could be the difference between life and death.

    •    Before the brain has time to fully process your fear- such as how valid or realistic it is- it gets other bodily systems involved. It is this response that turns the emotion of fear into actual physical feelings we associate with being afraid.

So What:

Let's use Putin again! Putin sells fear. He knows it is a basic emotion that short circuits the logic and conscience part of the brain. He acts fast in order to negate the modifying impact of the hippocampus. He recognizes that logical thinking networked by the hippocampus will prove to be detrimental to his cause. He knows logical thinking will take hold the longer time goes on. So as time goes on, he continues to ramp up the fear approach. (Possibly he does this to delay the introduction of memory and conscience into the fear equation. Or maybe he is not that smart and is just reacting!)

 We react with the flight or fright syndrome. Brain science tells us that we all react differently- we flight or we fight. Most Ukrainians decided to fight. Most others fled to other countries. The Ukrainian leader decided to fight. Other world leaders decided that the answer was to flee the issue. They envision a nuclear war.

The longer this goes on, perhaps the hippocampus of our collective brains will have more control and more informed decisions will take hold and Putin will no longer be able to sell fear.