Blog Post #6: Engaging With Research
MLA Cite:
Carleton, R.Nicholas. “Fear of the Unknown: One Fear to Rule Them All?” Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol. 41, June 2016, pp. 5–21. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.03.011.
Define:
“Fear of the unknown (FOTU) will be defined herein as, “an individual’s propensity to experience fear caused by the perceived absence ofinformation at any level of consciousness or point of processing…” (pg5)
“…intolerance of uncertainty (IU) will be defined as, “an individual’s dispositional incapacity to endure the aversive response triggered by the perceived absence of salient, key, or sufficient information, and sustained by the associated perception of uncertainty.” (pg5)
“A person who fears death may not fear death, per se, instead fearing (1) the process of dying, which is reducible to other fears (e.g., AS, FNE, IIS, fear of pain); (2) that death will be unpleasant (e.g., the afterlife may be painful);(3) unknowns about death (e.g., death may or may not involve an afterlife), making the unknown the object of fear; or (4)the concept of oblivion, an unequivocal unknown, which requires substantial a priori learning.” (pg11)
“Fear of snakes has been argued as innate for primates (e.g., Hebb, 1949); however, 6-month-old infants show no fear of snakes because the fear has not yet been learned (Kagan & Snidman, 2004); in contrast, 4-month-old infants broadly demonstrate fear responses to unfamiliar stimuli (Kagan & Snidman, 2004). Snakes may become more likely to produce fear because, relative to other more frequently encountered stimuli, snakes have unfamiliar skin, body shape, and movement patterns (Kagan & Snidman, 2004), all of which speaks more to a biological preparedness for unknowns (Carleton, 2016), or other elements of the stimulus, than to the cohesive stimulus itself.” (pg6)
Understand:
This paper’s argument is that fear of the unknown is the root of all fear, leading to many other specific fears (i.e, fear of spiders, fear of death, fear of pain, etc…) .
The paper talks about what criteria qualifies as the fundamental of fear, and what makes fears of the unknown a fundamental fear. People have certain types of fear because they have experienced the trauma of an event of that type. The paper points out one example of hydrophobia, and hydrophobic individuals are indeed not scared of the water they drink nor shower. They may have specific experiences such as drowning, which results in triggering a trauma. Though water is undoubtedly a factor, it is not causation of fear, so it is more of the feeling of what may come next, which they do not know. The individual panics, “will I die?”. The unknown factors breed fearing of death, and as this individual survives, they fear drowning.
Evaluate:
This research paper’s source is theoretical yet logical because of many references to theory and studies from other psychologists such as Freud. At the same time, the report needs more research and real-time experiments for a better consolidating data. This research paper contributes to the psychology field because it studies fears to identify anxiety and neuroticism category better. This study tries to understand the root level of neuroticism (anxiety, depression, moods swing, etc.) through understanding an individual’s trauma.
Distinguish:
This research paper works with my research because I am looking for how Stoker portrays fear in Dracula and the relationship between Count Dracula and Jonathan Harker. In chapters two through four, Jonathan’s relationship with Count Dracula is a dynamic power system, where Jonathan’s anxiety and fear become clear as Count Dracula exerts control over him. I want to have a clear understanding of whether Jonathan fears Dracula as a monster or fears the death that Dracula can cause. It is intriguing to me because I doubt Jonathan understands Dracula as a vampire but as a non-human. I can use this research paper to explain why Jonathan fears and what he fears.
Create:
I can make use of the definition of fear within this research paper. While it is theoretical work, it still applies to the fiction of Dracula. I want to use this paper to amplify and clarify Jonathan’s experiences in his journal. At the same time, I want to do a psychoanalysis of Jonathan with a focus on fear.
