What Are We So Afraid of? How Early Attention Shapes Our Most Common Fears

Abstract

Fear is one of our most salient emotions, and one that is shared among humans and nonhumans alike. Traditional and modern views of how we acquire fear suggest that it is learned through conditioning or observation. However, an interesting aspect of human fears is that they are not all created equal—some fears are more likely to be experienced than others. In this article, I discuss some recent developmental research that sheds new light on why we are more likely to experience certain fears over others, and how attention and learning might work together to produce some of our most common fears and anxieties.

Full text

What Are We So Afraid of? How Early Attention
Shapes Our Most Common Fears
Vanessa LoBue
Rutgers University
ABSTRACT—Fear is one of our most salient emotions, and
one that is shared among humans and nonhumans alike.
Traditional and modern views of how we acquire fear sug-
gest that it is learned through conditioning or observation.
However, an interesting aspect of human fears is that they
are not all created equal—some fears are more likely to be
experienced than others. In this article, I discuss some
recent developmental research that sheds new light on why
we are more likely to experience certain fears over others,
and how attention and learning might work together to
produce some of our most common fears and anxieties.
KEYWORDS—threat; detection; attention; fear
WHATAREWESOAFRAIDOF?
Fear is one of our most important emotions. Common among
mammals, it functions as a signal of impending threat. As
humans, our fears and anxieties show a similar developmental
trajectory from infancy through adulthood. Between 9 and
12 months, most infants start to show the first signs of being
afraid and cling to their loved ones when approached by a stran-
ger (Schaffer, 1974). Once they reach preschool age, children
are most often afraid of ghosts and goblins, and later begin to
fear animals like snakes and spiders. Finally, in early adoles-
cence, social fears and anxieties emerge, such as fear of rejec-
tion or crowds (Broeren, Lester, Muris, & Field, 2011). The fact
that we all experience a similar developmental trajectory in what
makes us afraid suggests that fears are nonrandomly distributed,
with some categories appearing significantly more often than
others. In fact, our most common fears—fear of heights,
enclosed spaces, blood or injury, and animals like snakes and
spiders—generally involve stimuli that are threatening. These
fears appear early in development and remain common even in
adults (Broeren et al., 2011).
For decades, researchers have asked how we acquire such
fears, and why some are more common than others. Indeed, there
are multiple pathways by which we can become afraid, all of
which involve general learning mechanisms (e.g., Mineka &
Zinbarg, 2006; Rachman, 1977). However, general learning
mechanisms might not provide the whole story. Recently,
developmental researchers have demonstrated that visual atten-
tion might play an important role in learning fear by directing our
attention selectively to threatening stimuli in the environment
(LoBue, Rakison, & DeLoache, 2010). Attention might also bias
us to associate fear with some stimuli more readily than others,
making it more likely that such fears will be learned (DeLoache
& LoBue, 2009). Finally, negative experience might also recipro-
cally drive attention, leading us to attend selectively to stimuli
that already cause us some anxiety (LoBue, 2010a; LoBue &
Pe
´rez-Edgar, 2012). In this article, I review recent developmental
work that sheds new light on the process of fear development,
focusing on the relative roles of attention and learning on the
development of some of our most common fears and anxieties.
HOW DO WE ACQUIRE FEARS?
Given that our most common fears—both early and late in
development—are of threatening stimuli like snakes and
spiders, many have asked about the ways in which these
common fears are acquired. Both classic and contemporary
models of fear acquisition suggest multiple pathways by which
our basic fears can be learned. The most common models
Vanessa LoBue, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University.
I would like to thank members of the Child Study Center at Rut-
gers University for their valuable assistance conducting the research,
and Lana Karasik for help with manuscript preparation.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Vanessa LoBue, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, 101
Warren Street, Room 301, Newark, NJ 07103; e-mail: vlobue@
psychology.rutgers.edu.
©2012 The Author
Child Development Perspectives ©2012 The Society for Research in Child Development
DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12012
Volume 7, Number 1, 2013, Pages 38–42
CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES

involve classical conditioning (Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006; O
¨hman
& Mineka, 2001; Rachman, 1977), vicarious or observational
learning (Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006; Rachman, 1977), and learn-
ing through the transmission of negative verbal information
(Field, 2006; Field & Lawson, 2003; Rachman, 1977).
However, basic learning models do not tell the whole story.
According to the diathesis-stress approach to fear learning, for
example, individual differences characterized by temperament
or genetic factors might make some individuals more susceptible
to acquiring a fear (Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006). Furthermore,
general learning mechanisms alone do not account for why fears
are disproportionately distributed—why some fears, particularly
fears of threatening stimuli, are more common than others.
Researchers have thus proposed that the acquisition of some
fears might have a biological basis (Poulton & Menzies, 2002)
or that fear learning might be privileged, or learned very rapidly,
for some threatening stimuli like snakes and spiders (Mineka &
Zinbarg, 2006; O
¨hman & Mineka, 2001). Classic work from
Susan Mineka’s lab confirms that snake fear is indeed privileged
in learning for some nonhuman primates. Although wild-reared
rhesus monkeys are fearful of snakes, lab-reared monkeys are
not, indicating that the fear is not innate. However, lab-reared
monkeys vicariously learn to fear snakes by observing the
fearful behaviors of a fellow monkey. Most importantly, learning
snake fear is selective and rhesus monkeys do not learn other
fears, such as fears of flowers or rabbits, by watching the same
fearful displays (for a review, see O
¨hman & Mineka, 2001).
Thus, this work demonstrates strongly that snake fear is
privileged in learning for rhesus monkeys.
Are such fears also privileged in learning for humans? Classic
research from the adult literature suggests that they might be. In a
series of experiments using classical conditioning, Arne O
¨hman
and his colleagues conditioned adults to associate a mild electric
shock with images of either snakes and spiders (fear relevant) or
flowers and mushrooms (fear irrelevant). The association between
a shock and fear-relevant stimuli was consistently more difficult to
extinguish than the association between a shock and fear-irrele-
vant stimuli. More important, the same effect was found when pho-
tographs of the stimuli were presented so quickly that they could
not be consciously perceived: In these cases, when conditioned
with flowers and mushrooms, extinction occurred immediately;
conversely, when conditioned with snakes and spiders, partici-
pants continued to anticipate the shock even in its absence (for a
review, see O
¨hman & Mineka, 2001). Although such conditioning
studies are not necessarily equivalent to fear learning, they sug-
gest that humans might readily associate something negative or
unpleasant with threatening stimuli.
THE ROLE OF ATTENTION
Previous work with adults suggests that even humans more
strongly associate threatening stimuli with aversive or negative
outcomes. However, adults have a lifetime of experience and
knowledge about stimuli like snakes and spiders. Thus, if fear
learning for threatening stimuli is privileged, evidence of such a
privilege should be evident early in development. Recent
developmental work suggests that threatening stimuli are indeed
privileged early on, but their advantage lies in visual attention.
Based on this work, LoBue et al. (2010) proposed that humans
have perceptual biases for threatening stimuli that set the stage
for learning, potentially functioning early in development to
draw attention to important stimuli in the environment. Previous
work with adults has already shown evidence for these biases:
Adults visually detect snakes, spiders, and angry human faces
more quickly than a variety of positive or neutral stimuli such
as flowers, mushrooms, and happy faces (e.g., LoBue, 2009;
O
¨hman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001; O
¨hman, Lundqvist, & Esteves,
2001; for reviews, see Bar-Haim, Dominique, Lee, Bakermans-
Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007 or O
¨hman & Mineka,
2001). A similar propensity has been documented in nonhuman
primates, who detect a snake among flowers more quickly than
a flower among snakes (Shibasaki & Kawai, 2009).
Recent developmental research shows that even at a young
age, children have the same propensity as adults for the rapid
detection of various threats. Using a modified touch-screen
visual-search paradigm, LoBue and DeLoache (2008) showed
that like adults, children as young as three detect snakes more
quickly than flowers. More importantly, they even detect snakes
more quickly than other animals that closely resemble snakes,
like frogs and caterpillars (LoBue & DeLoache, 2008).
Furthermore, 3-year-olds and adults also detect spiders more
quickly than mushrooms and cockroaches (LoBue, 2010b), and
5-year-olds and adults detect angry faces more quickly than a
variety of other facial expressions, including neutral, happy, and
sad faces (LoBue, 2009).
In each of these studies, rapid detection was not related to
whether children were afraid of the target stimuli, suggesting that
perceptual biases for threat are present regardless of whether chil-
dren are afraid of these stimuli. Furthermore, research with infants
who have had no experience interacting with snakes suggests that
these biases develop very early, much before the acquisition of
snake and spider fears. When presented with two images side by
side on a large screen, 9- to 12-month-olds turned more quickly to
look at snakes versus flowers, and at angry faces versus happy
faces (LoBue & DeLoache, 2009). Five-month-olds also look
longer at images of spiders than at images of scrambled spiders
(whose parts have been moved so they no longer look like spiders).
The same result was not found for images of flowers, suggesting
that the infants might even have an early perceptual template for
threatening stimuli (Rakison & Derringer, 2008).
Besides demonstrating a bias for the rapid detection of
threatening stimuli, developmental research has shown that
infants have a perceptual bias for the association of snakes and
spiders with something fear relevant, like a fearful face or fearful
voice. For example, when DeLoache and LoBue (2009) presented
7- to 16-month-olds with two videos side by side—one of a snake
Child Development Perspectives, Volume 7, Number 1, 2013, Pages 38–42
Early Perception and Learning Shape Fear 39

and one of another animal (elephant, giraffe, etc.)—the children
looked longer at the video of a snake when accompanied by a fear-
ful voice soundtrack versus a happy voice. Rakison (2009)
reported similar results with fearful faces—11-month-old girls
more strongly associate a snake and spider with the image of a
fearful face than with the image of a happy face. As in the studies
above, these effects were found in the absence of any behavioral
evidence of fear—the infants were merely making a perceptual
match between an image or video of a snake and a fearful face or
voice, much like in other auditory-visual matching studies where
infants make a perceptual match between a fearful face and a fear-
ful voice or a video of a drum beating and its corresponding sound
(e.g., Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987;Spelke &
Cortelyou, 1981; Walker-Andrews, 1997). The infants showed no
behavioral evidence of fear themselves.
Together, this recent developmental work suggests that humans
have perceptual biases for threatening stimuli that are visible
early in development. More specifically, infants, children, and
adults detect the presence of threat more quickly than various
benign stimuli, and infants have a propensity to match the appear-
ance of snakes and spiders with fearful faces and voices. Further-
more, although humans are perceptually sensitive to these
commonly feared stimuli, such perceptual biases precede the
development of fearful behaviors. Again, there is no behavioral
evidence of actual fear in any of these studies. In fact, a recent
study of 18- to 36-month-olds’ naturalistic responses to a live
snake and spider showed no evidence of fear. Conversely, infants
were highly interested in the live snake and spider and interacted
with them just as frequently as they interacted with a live fish and
a hamster (LoBue et al., in press).
If these perceptual biases for threat are visible in the absence
of fear, then one might ask: How they are related to fear devel-
opment? As mentioned above, one possibility is that these
biases facilitate fear learning, making fears of snakes and spi-
ders very easy to acquire. These biases draw attention to threat-
ening information in the environment and they do so from a very
early age. Thus, heightened attention and increased sensitivity
to associating the image of a snake or spider with fear-relevant
information might act as a catalyst for learning, making fears of
these threatening stimuli more likely to develop (LoBue et al.,
2010).
THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE
Although attention might play a role in learning, experience
might also reciprocally drive attention. In other words, our expe-
riences with fear and anxiety might make us more attentive to
stimuli that induce stress. Although experience is difficult to
account for in adults, recent developmental work has attempted
to address this issue by studying children, whose experiences
are more limited. Preschoolers, for example, have a predictable
amount of experience with two modern threats that adults detect
very quickly: knives and syringes (LoBue, 2010a). In Western
cultures, most 3-year-olds have few opportunities to handle
knives and are unlikely to have had negative experiences with
them (e.g., being cut or stabbed). In contrast, most 3-year-olds
in the United States are likely to have been punctured by a
syringe to receive mandatory vaccinations. LoBue (2010a)
asked parents about their 3-year-olds’ experiences with syringes
and knives, and then asked the children to participate in two
tasks where they detected knives versus a perceptually similar
neutral control stimulus (spoons), and syringes versus a neutral
control (pens). As predicted, although no children were permit-
ted to interact with knives at home and had no negative experi-
ences with knives, all the children had been punctured by a
syringe. In fact, 91% of mothers spontaneously reported that
their children did not like needles. Although adults detect both
knives and syringes more quickly than neutral controls (Blanch-
ette, 2006; Brosch & Sharma, 2005), children detected only the
syringes more quickly, suggesting that experience may shift
attention to stimuli that cause anxiety (LoBue, 2010a).
Previous research has shown that individual differences and
experiences can also drive perception. Adults with clinical
anxiety, for example, are particularly sensitive to social threat
cues in detection, even more sensitive than are nonanxious con-
trols (for a review, see Bar-Haim et al., 2007). This heightened
sensitivity is present early on, even in children who have not
yet developed clinical anxiety: Temperamentally shy 4-year-olds
—who are at risk for developing clinical anxiety—show
heightened attention to angry faces when compared to nonshy
4-year-olds in a control group. In particular, they are slower to
detect happy faces when angry faces are present as distracters
(LoBue & Pe
´rez-Edgar, 2012). Together, this work suggests that
although perception can drive the development of fear, anxieties
can also drive perception and heighten our attention to feared
stimuli.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEAR
This review highlights new developmental work demonstrating
that from infancy, our perceptual systems are sensitive to
threats, drawing our attention to them more readily than to other
stimuli (DeLoache & LoBue, 2009; LoBue, 2009, 2010b; LoBue
& DeLoache, 2008, 2009; Rakison, 2009; Rakison & Derringer,
2008). These findings suggest that our perceptual system is
biased for processing threat stimuli. Based on classic work,
researchers have proposed an evolutionary origin for such
biases, presuming that there was some advantage to quickly
detecting evolutionarily relevant threats in the environment,
making escape easier and more efficient (e.g., O
¨hman & Mine-
ka, 2001; Seligman, 1971). Recently Isbell (2009) provided a
compelling argument for why our visual system may have
adapted based on the challenge of detecting dangerous predators
like snakes. Regardless of their origins, the data presented here
suggest that such biases for threats like snakes, spiders, and
angry faces are present early in development. They also suggest
Child Development Perspectives, Volume 7, Number 1, 2013, Pages 38–42
40 Vanessa LoBue

that we have the flexibility to learn to be sensitive to environ-
mentally specific threats, like knives and syringes, by having
negative experiences with such stimuli, and that learned fears
might reciprocally drive attention, highlighting stimuli in the
environment that cause us anxiety (LoBue, 2010a; LoBue &
Pe
´rez-Edgar, 2012).
This research has important implications for how we acquire
our most common fears. As several researchers have suggested,
our fears likely develop as the result of some kind of experience,
either by direct conditioning, vicarious conditioning or observa-
tional learning, or exposure to negative information (Mineka &
Zinbarg, 2006; O
¨hman & Mineka, 2001; Rachman, 1977). How-
ever, basic learning mechanisms do not tell the whole story. Our
most common fears, such as the fear of threatening stimuli,
might receive some support from visual attention or attentional
biases. These attentional biases might privilege fear learning for
certain kinds of threats, explaining why such fears are so
common (LoBue et al., 2010). This is an important issue for
future discussion. To date, only a few studies have examined
how fearful or avoidance behaviors are learned, and no study
has compared the ease of fear learning for threatening versus
nonthreatening stimuli in humans. If early perceptual sensitivity
privileges fear learning for some stimuli over others, we should
observe that fear develops more quickly for stimuli like
snakes and spiders than for neutral stimuli over the course of
development.
A related question is whether there is a specific type of learn-
ing that best facilitates fear acquisition. In other words, would
children learn to fear snakes and spiders more rapidly based on
observational learning, like in Mineka’s work with rhesus mon-
keys? Or is hearing negative or threatening information about a
snake (e.g., that they bite) sufficient to elicit fearful behaviors?
Finally, a third important question is whether an advantage for
snakes and spiders in detection leads to an advantage in adap-
tive action, such as escape. Many of the studies documenting an
advantage for snakes and spiders report differences in detection
of seconds or even milliseconds. Does such a brief advantage
buy us anything when it comes to making decisions for
action? Research examining these distinctions can help deter-
mine whether early perceptual sensitivities lead to adaptive
behavior.
CONCLUSIONS
This review of work demonstrates that emotional processing, and
fear development in particular, is a complex system that involves
reciprocal and interacting relationships between attention and
learning. This process begins with low-level perceptual biases that
are visible early in infancy, and it endures throughout childhood
and is still visible into our adult years. These biases draw attention
to threatening stimuli in the environment, and this heightened
attention might help facilitate fear acquisition if a learning experi-
ence were to take place. Such biases would thus privilege fear
learning for a subset of stimuli—thesameonesthatwefindmost
often in adult fears and phobias. Research in this area can further
clarify the processes by which we acquire our most common fears
and anxieties, and can shed light on whether perception privileges
some of these fears from an early age.
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