Fear Conditioning In Psychology

Fear is most commonly recognized as a simple feeling we get when faced with a potentially dangerous situation. However, it is a complex response from the brain in order to protect ourselves from a threatening situation. Fear is not as simple as it may seem, and there are many aspects to it that are overlooked including the process and effects, as well as many other things.
There are five parts of the brain involved with fear and the response to it. The thalamus receives incoming data and decides where to send it. It is located deep within the brain at the top of the brainstem and under the cerebral cortex, near the center of the brain. It is connected to the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and spinal cord to receive sensory information. The sensory …show more content…
This is basically how we obtain the majority of our fears, and is what brings our hippocampus into the process of fear. As said before, the hippocampus is what stores our memories. In fear conditioning, if a situation has a negative or dangerous outcome, it will be stored in our mind. When faced with a situation similar to a previous negative one, the hippocampus goes through its memories and the amygdala associates the situation with the previous outcome. This has been studied multiple times, like in the 1920’s with an infant being conditioned to fear white rats, and later with rats learning to fear a certain noise. It is also seen in everyday life, such as someone having a fear of dogs due to being attacked by one years ago. It is even possible for people to not remember a certain situation, and still feel a threat from seemingly innocent potential threats. This was seen in the early 1900s, when a doctor shook an amnesiac patient’s hand. He had a pin in his palm and it hurt the patient. The next day, the patient refused to shake the doctor’s hand, despite having no recollection of the event or ever having any signs of remembering encounters with the …show more content…
The fear of falling and of loud noises are the only two real instinctual fears humans actually have. The majority of our other fears are learned within the first six years of our life. This would not be including potential traumatic events that may occur in our teenage years or adulthood. The instinctual fear of loud noises is what enabled scientists to condition the infant from the 1920’s, Albert, to fear white rats by making loud noises behind him any time he saw a white rat. The rats in later experiments were given an electric shock any time the sound was played and, even if a shock wasn 't delivered, the rats would show signs of fear any time the sound was