The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

by Daniel Gardner

There is obvious survival value in remembering personal experiences of risk. But even more valuable for our ancient ancestors—and us, too—is the ability to learn and remember from the experiences of others. After all, there’s only one of you. But when you sit around the campfire after a long day of foraging, there may be twenty or thirty other people. If you can gather their experiences, you will multiply the information on which your judgments are based twenty or thirty times. Sharing experiences means telling stories. It also means visualizing the event the guy next to you at the campfire is telling you about: imagining the dimmest member of the tribe wading into the shallow waters of the river; imagining him poking a floating log with his walking stick; imagining the log suddenly turning into a crocodile; imagining the trail of bubbles that marks the demise of the tribe’s dimmest member. Having envisioned the scene and committed it to memory, Gut can then use it to make judgments just as it uses memories from personal experiences. Risk of crocodile attack at water’s edge?