Fear, a powerful and primitive human emotion, essentially shapes all that humans do. Whether to skydive off an airplane or pick up a tarantula with bare hands, fear motivates action, giving a new sense of concentration, avoidance or preparation.
Robert Chavez, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, said the environment affects fears in a number of different ways, depending on the individual and the source of fear.
“Many people living in places where there [are] high crime rates, war, violence or other fear inducing states, will often ‘desensitize,’ or what psychologists call habituate to these environments, in order to continuing functioning in their daily lives,” Chavez said. “Others may do the opposite and become even more sensitive to these cues in their environment; psychologists call this sensitization.”
There are many ways a person’s own experience can lead him or her to associate different things in the environment with feelings of fear, Chavez said. One common misunderstanding of emotions is that humans view them  as independent from other psychological processes when, in fact, emotions are often a part of the processes.
“Fear and learning is a nice example of this. Many researchers believe fear itself is indeed a learning mechanism that has been used to help people survive,” Chavez said. “For example, if you see a long, tan colored object on a dirt trail in front of you, it is safer to automatically associate this with ‘snake’ even if it turns out to just be just a stick because snakes are more likely to harm you than sticks.”
An individual’s biggest fear can very well affect daily life, even if it is not an animate object like a snake. Junior Audrey Snyder fears making a mistake, regardless of how small, in her social, educational or familial spheres. Snyder credits this fear to the idea that every decision she makes can magnify and expand to affect the future.
“Every choice has the potential to make or break, whether or not to study an extra hour, commit to an activity or who you associate yourself with, and reverberates into your future career, relationships, success and happiness,” Snyder said. “Having the wrong mentality, in the wrong place, at the wrong time could determine so much of your life after that moment that it hangs over my head and has impacted almost my entire high school experience.”