Ancestral Threats vs. Modern Threats

Introduction

Survival threats posed by the environment have continuously tormented and challenged human beings. From an evolutionary perspective, the brain mechanisms associated with fear were designed by natural selection to contend with these threats. The list of hazards likely faced by our ancestors included snakes, spiders, heights, darkness, and strangers. Our ancestors’ concerns about dangerous stimuli such as these have been carried over to modern humans. In addition to evolutionary threats (e.g., predators and diseases), modern humans encounter a staggering array of novel threats (e.g., ionizing radiation, automobile accidents, and chain saws) that did not exist until very recently on an evolutionary time scale.

Ancestral Threats

Throughout human evolution, the ability to identify threatening situations has been a critical feature of our psychological structure. A failure to recognize and thwart a threat could have been fatal for our ancestors. The concept of biological...