The main function of fear and anxiety is to act as a signal of danger, threat, or motivational conflict, and to trigger appropriate adaptive responses. For some authors, fear and anxiety are undistinguishable, whereas others believe that they are distinct phenomena. Ethologists define fear as a motivational state aroused by specific stimuli that give rise to defensive behavior or escape.14 Animals may learn to fear situations in which they have previously been exposed to pain or stress, and subsequently show avoidance behavior when they re-encounter that situation. Young animals may show an innate fear reaction to sudden noise or disturbances in the environment, but rapidly become habituated to them. When they are used to a familiar environment, then a fear of novelty may develop. Ethologists have also made the important observation that fear is often mixed up with other aspects of motivation. Thus, conflict between fear and approach behavior may results in displacement activities (eg, self-grooming in rats). Such displacement activities may be the behavioral expression of an anxious state, but anxiety is a concept that is apparently not used by ethologists, perhaps because their definition of fear does in fact include all the more biological aspects of anxiety.
Name
Fear - 9
Owner
0x4c19f7E367517fee82d655370336E2d724166fCF
ID#99439912…794369
Rarity
LO:75%
Fear
Nine
EX:MAX