Dread of a Normal Depth Trivia Quiz

Answer: A 45-year old female with extremely narrow pupils

Fear symptoms include an accelerated heart rate, an increased blood pressure, especially for the systolic (upper) value, sweating, tightening of skeletal muscles and dilated pupils. Narrow pupils might indicate a state of shock, but are unlikely to occur during an active fear phase.

Answer: Terror

Terror is the most extreme acute form of fear, usually felt when the subject perceives a clear and present danger to his life. This is most often a natural response but can also occur from pathological conditions. In the latter case, this often happens because a certain stimulus present in an extremely frightening situation repeats without the actual threat but retriggers the fearful memories.

Answer: Disgust

Worry and anxiety represent abstract fears without a direct present stimulus. They are however typically based in fact in that there is a valid threat to the individual or one he loves, except that this threat is vague and may be in a relatively far future. Mistrust towards others is based in the fear that the other person may be dishonest or otherwise trying to take advantage of the subject. Disgust, however, is usually a fear-free response to an aesthetically displeasing sight, sound, smell or taste.

Answer: The basic mechanism of fear is inborn, but specific fears must be learned (conditioned)

Fear as such is an inborn reflex that every human and higher animal possesses as a survival mechanism. In its most basic and natural form, it occurs as a result of unusual, sudden and strong sensory input (which is typically a sign of danger). Specific fears, however, are acquired in a conditioning process, either through the combination of a sensory input with actual harm or another sensation already known as terrifying.

In many cases, such specific fears can be lessened or even completely unlearned again if the fear-causing stimulus is received in calm and safe situations often enough.

Answer: Urging drivers to speed to minimize trip times

While a sufferer of fear will usually want to shorten the time exposed to a fearful situation, he will even more avoid any action that would increase the intensity of the fear. Using a train instead of a car evades the fearful situation entirely, driving more slowly adds calmness and allows the sufferer to feel safer and driving oneself instead of riding as a passenger adds control over the situation while also being different from the experience of riding as a passenger.

Answer: It precludes rational thought and action

Panic is an extreme case of fear characterized by the subject losing its ability to reason and acting only on the basis of reflexes and instincts. It can however even occur in situations where the subject is unable to act at all due to injury or outside circumstances. Panic is especially dangerous today because many elements of the modern world are constructed for the use by rationally thinking individuals and fail if primal instincts, once correct and often life-saving, take over.

The most typical such reaction is the single-minded running flight from the location of danger which is most often the correct action in nature, even for large groups (a stampede of buffalo is usually not dangerous to the herd) but fatal in the modern world (e.g. with people being trampled at narrow exits or running in front of cars on a busy road).

Answer: Fear is lessened when you can control the situation

The important difference between the shotgun passenger and the three rear passengers is that the shotgun rider can rectify the situation. By grabbing the steering wheel, turning off the ignition and using the hand brake, he can influence the situation by bringing the vehicle to a safe stop.

In his case, the fear reaction gives him the important extra alertness and physiological readiness to manage the difficult task. The back seat passengers, however, have no useful way of channeling the fear reaction and are thus much more likely to panic.

Answer: It varies - simpler reactions benefit from stronger fears

Increasing from mild worry to outright panic, fear has two effects: on the one hand, it increasingly puts the senses and muscles into a state of heightened readiness and performance, but it also more and more dominates the mental processes. For simple reactions such as running away from a danger as fast as possible or breaking down a door, a very high boost is clearly the most beneficial and the exclusion of all other mental activity and nonessential perception (e.g. for pain) helps the body overcome physical obstacles. For reactions that require clear thinking or precise manipulation, the optimum level of added readiness is lower.

Answer: Take a tandem parachute jump with an experienced instructor

As already stated in question 4, experiencing a fear stimulus in a safe and pleasant environment will help you to gradually weaken its fear-inducing effect. To remain pleasant, however, the stimulus may not be overwhelming. Watching height scenes on a TV screen will provide you with the sight of heights in a safe frame (the room around). This will however only have a small effect as the stimulus is very mild in this case. Riding a glass elevator (a very safe, robust compartment) is more challenging but also more effective - make sure to pick a slow one first so that going down will not startle you. Finally, jumping on a trampoline at a height you can control yourself and experiencing short falls as fun will also help.

Using a strong stimulus such as a parachute jump in initial training, however, will likely overwhelm you and only cause you to be in panic during the entire jump, not only reinforcing and worsening your fear but also putting your tandem partner and yourself into real, mortal peril. So don't do that! If you want to overcome your fears, you need to go to the level where you just briefly feel uncomfortable, but not beyond.

Also, if you really experience a full-blown phobia - an overly strong type of situational fear that adversely affects your ability to manage your daily life - please do seek professional help and therapy. Fear therapists can help you determine the situation(s) initially responsible for you to develop the phobia and ensure a controlled, gradual progress. Helping yourself is advised only for situations when you have a mild or moderate fear condition not negatively affecting your daily life and want to challenge yourself and experience more exciting situations.

Answer: The immediate positive feeling of having successfully braved the fear

The ultimate factor in making a thrill ride or other frightful experience pleasant is to build it in a way that the negative feeling is brief and immediately replaced with the positive feeling of salvation which then lasts. A good thrill ride is not a concatenation of one frightful drop after the other, but riders do get moments of respite, seconds to cherish the fact that they just comfortably made it through a frightful situation before that situation could even fully sink into memory. Both creators and users of fear-based thrill experiences walk fine lines - if something goes wrong during the ride and the rider actually hurts himself or the fear moment lasts too long for its intensity, it can result in severe mental trauma and phobias.

The other factors mentioned also contribute to the positive experience in that they will help in the ability to face the proposed fear in the first place and avoid the negative aspect to be too strong - without the example of others making it out safely and the gradual experience of increasingly thrilling rides, very few would ever brave a modern freefall ride or hypercoaster.