What is fear? Fear is the feeling we all experience in the face of danger, once the danger is gone the rapid feeling of worry soon subsides. Fear is an emotion that helps us survive, it is an evolutionary trait designed specifically for that reason.

What is innate fears? Most fears like of snakes, bugs, or a fear of strangers is a fear that is learned, but innate fears is a fear that we were born with for survival purposes. We have two innate fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.

Fears can be learned, this is known as innate learning, babies learn by watching their parents behaviors and interpreting their actions in a situation. Babies aren't born afraid of snakes, so if you give a baby a rubber snake it will play with it. But if a parent shows the worry and quickly removes the snake, the baby will show the same fear that they learned from their parents. Researchers and Behaviorist agree that most fears are learned not innate. Animals are the same way.

Racism is taught to the children by their parents, people are instilled to hate at a very young and vulnerable age, they learn to hate a specific race as if their lives depended on it for survival. It then becomes an unconscious action to fear or to hate those who are black or of another race. A parent could instill the fear of black people into kids, teaching them they are dangerous and to stay way. As an adult one could feel uneasy around black people as if they were in a dangerous situation.

Religion follows the same process, we are taught at a very young age to believe in a God and a set of moral values of that specific Religion. The Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, one parent teaches it to their children as a sin, but not to hate them for it. Yet another parent could very well teach a child that these people are to be hated and shunned for it.

Here is a short video from the movie Mr. Nobody (2013) showing the innate fears in baby gooses.

Next blog: What is Depression?