Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

What happens if an animal encounters something truly unexpected-something that should just not be, according to its current frame of reference or system ofbelief? The answer to this question sheds substantiallight on the nature of the orienting reflex, in its fuH manifestation. Modern experimental psychologists have begun to examine the response of animals to natural sources of mystery and threat. They allow the animals to set up their own environments, realistic environments, and then expose them to the kinds of surprising circumstances they might encounter in reallife. The appearance of a predator in previously safe space (space previously explored, that is, and mapped as useful or irrelevant) constitutes one type of realistic surprise. Blanchard and coHeagues describe the naturalistic behavior of rats, under such conditions: When a cat is presented to established mixed-sex groups of laboratory rats living in a visible burrow system, the behaviors of the subjects change dramatically, in many cases for 24 hours or more.124 The initial active defensive behavior, flight to the tunnel! chamber system, is followed by aperiod of immobility during which the rats make 22 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations, which apparently serve as alarm cries, at a high rate.125 As freezing breaks up, proxemic avoidance of the open area gradually gives way to a pattern of "risk assessment" of the area where the cat was encountered. Subjects poke their heads out of the tunnel openings to scan the open...