FEAR impacts everyone daily. Understanding how fear is used to gain power over individuals is something we need to put into the curriculum. I fear the general population does not understand the FEAR Factor used to manipulate and control.

Let’s talk about FEAR.

I’ve heard it defined as Feelings and emotions that appear real but aren’t. What do we fear? Negative consequences. Guess who knows that? Everyone who wishes to control. Be it a parent. A teacher, an advertiser, a politician, policemen, and even friends use fear to get someone else to what they want. The fear of losing something is real. The fear of the loss of love, of dingy clothes, Children often fear the unknown. If they have never experienced something, they may fear it until they try it. 

In some cases, fear can protect us. Fear of getting a ticket for speeding protects use from accidents that result from reckless driving. Fear of getting a bad grade on a test prompts us to study. The fear of being grounded or not being able to drive mom’s car will make some teens think twice about what they are about to do. The fear of having dingy clothes prompts us to purchase a different detergent.

The FEAR Factor-This is How it Works

How does fear impact our brains? Fear in the brain acts as an emergency, immediate-response system, bypassing slow rational thought to trigger the amygdala, which activates the “fight or flight” response via adrenaline, increasing heart rate, focus, and alertness. It temporarily impairs the prefrontal cortex, hindering logic.

The prefrontal cortex is in the front-most part of the frontal lobe, acting as the brain’s “executive center” for planning, decision-making, personality expression, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior.

These images show students what happens in the brain when they are stressed. The red coloring demonstrates how blood is drawn away from the part of the brain where logic, problem solving, and critical thinking occur.

The left image demonstrates the connections made from the prefrontal cortex to many regions in the brain when the brain is calm. This allows for solving problems, accessing prior knowledge, and critically evaluating what is seen an heard.  

In a nutshell, fear creates a blood flow shift from the front of the brain to our limbs to allow for a quick get-a-way. That is why a student can be over prepared for a test, but the minute they feel stressed, they will not be able to access prior knowledge. Knowing that fear is behind momentary memory loss, will prompt students to apply stress relieving methods to allow for proper flow to the hippocampus, whose job is to access and retrieve information. Once they relax, skip questions, come back to them, they find they can easily access the material they studied. 

Without this knowledge, students will report that as soon as they leave the classroom the information pops into their head. Helping students understand how their fear of failing can result in them failing encourages them to recognize fear and what they can do to stop its impact on them. This is important information to help reduce student stress and improve performance.

Fear is a common element used to persuade costumers to purchase products. Advertisers posed questions, “Are your clothes dingy?” “Our product makes whites whiter than white.” How can anything be whiter than white? It makes the consumer worry that they are wasting their money on the present detergent and later discover that the new detergent doesn’t do a better job. Pharmaceutical companies do the same thing, “Do you have itchy scaly skin?” “We have the solution. Tell you doctor about.” People don’t listen to the list of side effects, because their brains have been primed for only a solution. The same is for quick weight loss methods. Those desperate to lose weight never hear or see the known side effects. 

We will serve our students to help them understand how their brain responds to different stimulus, so they can become wise consumers of the information they get on the many media outlets they are exposed to. 

Try this activity: Study media and evaluate if FEAR is present. Then ask the questions, “Why.” “What is being sold?”

My next blog will feature the neuroscience behind hacking attention and the power of student’s personal questions. 

Please comment below. Let me know how your experiment enlightened your students.