Does fear make you smart or stupid?

Question

I've seen fear make people smarter, more focused, and driven. I've also seen it make people reactionary, cowardly, and naive. What accounts for the difference? I'm sure you could call the difference "courage", but i'm hoping y'all can shed a little more light on things.

Answer 1

Depends on the person. Just like anger can affect people differently. Some people fly off the handle, some people channel anger into constructive reaction. Some people store up the anger until they amass a nice gun collection and go to the mall and start killing people, especially that salesperson in the Sears auto center who screwed you over on the brake job last week and deserves to be killed in a violent ...

Oh wait, what was the question again?

Answer 2

My opinion on this is: It is normal to have fear of the unknown but feel a person who is of higher intelligence (smart) will investigate or research all aspects to make a good decision based on that fear. Intelligence & Common sense is what I feel is the difference.

Courage is a good thing but I have seen some people I have considered not very smart have displayed courage and things did not turn out very good.

Answer 3

I never did like President GW Bush, but he's not exactly stupid. He's not intellectually gifted, but he probably has a slightly above average IQ, say around 105. This really isn't enough mind for a President to contend with presidential business, both official and political. The minimum IQ for a US president ought to be higher, say around 130. Bush's difficulties were compounded by the fact that he is not naturally loquacious, not "fast on his feet," and that's why he sometimes utters gaffs that pundits use while poking fun at him. Bush is mentally an average fellow who was far out of his depth as US President, and was for that reason easy to manipulate by the financial interests and media bosses best positioned to do the manipulating. Obama may be more intelligent than Bush. I say "may" because we won't really know until the media stop puffing him up, and we finally get a peek at what he's got upstairs. There are a few indications that Obama isn't as smart as he's being made up to be, such as his claim to have visited "57 states" (there are only 50 of them), and it is well known that his speechmaking off the teleprompter is far less adroit than when he's reading his script. But Obama has a different vulnerability with respect to those financial interests and media bosses. He was born in Kenya to a mother too young to bequeath to him a natural-born US citizenship. It was the very good fortune of Americans that someone found out about it before Obama's inauguration and blew the whistle. The hidden powers that be meant for the secret of Obama's non-citizen status to be their trump card over him, to be played in the event that Obama displeased them with his acts as US President. Those PTB don't suffer being balked gladly, and Phillip Berg may be in danger because he queered their deal over Obama's presidency by spilling the beans about his foreign citizenship.

Answer 4

I think it depends on where your fear is channeled.

From my experience, when you are afraid for someone else your mind becomes sharper, this helps you calculate the situation, and hopefully eliminate whatever is causing the fear.
When you are afraid for yourself your mind becomes clouded, and confused. A fight or flight response is triggered, most often resulting in blind panic.

I'm going to give you a personal example of what I mean.
I was on a camping trip with my friends, and a couple of our teachers, I had just gone up to the restrooms with one of my teachers, and we had just come back.
We had pulled into the wrong campsite, had no flashlight, couldn't find anyone even though we called their names as loud as we could. We almost wandered blindly off a steep drop, but I saw it about three feet before we actually stepped off the edge.
Naturally we were scared, and jumpy.
We finally made our way back to the campsite, and were walking along the trail, laughing at our mistake.
One of my friends, and another of our teachers jumped out at us screaming.
In that moment I felt blind panic.
I couldn't see, couldn't hear anything but my own screaming, and couldn't sort out a decent thought.
My teacher fell into me, knocking me to the ground, and even in though I was hurt in several places the only clear thought that I could muster through my panic was "I hope she's alright."

I don't think it's courage, I think that our bodies will only react blindly unless there is someone else at stake.
Someone that requires us to think a bit more clearly.

Sorry it's long, I just wanted to give a good explanation.
:D

Answer 5

Fear is an essential part of human/animal survival behaviors. fear is essential motivator for the "fight or flight" response every leaving creature must have if it and its species are to survive to reproduce. heroism and coward-ism are the 2 sides of the same coin. the same individual in different circumstances will internalize his/her environment and make the choice to run or fight depending on their perception of which behavior offers the best chance of survivability and/or their best chance to reproduce. Darwin's theory did not promote the "survival of the strongest" , but the" survival of the fittest" the one(s) best able to live the longest and produce the most offspring. So if flight offers the best chance of survivalibility then run. If fight is the better choice then fight..
So fear is more likely to indicate intelligence then stupidity even if the action inspires contempt by others.

Answer 6

Fear tends to focus the mind on basic survival; controlled by the most primitive parts of the brain. What happens in the seconds after the surprising event depends on the person.
It is possible to train one's mind to handle shock and surprise, and to quickly recover to conscious reasoning. But many people don't do that, so they resort to very simple reactions that mostly boil down to "Run Away!"

Answer 7

Have problem with your term fear, because it comes in so many shapes and sizes. It seems your talking about people's reaction to fight or flight reaction. A burst of adrenal creates heighten state of intensity. Training and or conditioning produce reactions or non reactions you are talking about. Trying not to let life of watching war movies get into my way. In real world it's usually how one deals with fight or flight reaction. These reactions are most likely product of immediate situation mixing with life time of experiences. If I had very neat easily reproduced answer would make billions selling it to DOD.

Answer 8

Living in misery with "Fear is the key"
With lost sense of direction and purpose of life.
Overcome it.
Will see the miracles and wonders out there.
Instead of being trap and short-change with it.
Luke 8.25
What do you think?

Answer 9

The Results of Fear -
By: Robert Elias Najemy
1. Fear and insecurity are synonymous. When we feel insecure, we naturally become concerned and spend great portions of time, energy, thought and money toward establishing external security. We focus on acquiring and protecting our sources of persons, food, shelter, sex, money, possessions, prestige or any other external factors which will help us feel secure.

2. This type of thinking and living is often, by necessity, ego-centered and maintained at the expense of others. We do not feel secure enough to love and give, but need to take. When such a psychology permeates our social and national psyche, it can lead to conflict and war.

3. When we feel insecure, we seldom feel the confidence to try something new; we tend to stick to old habits and familiar ways. We fear the new and the unknown. Our lives become stale, boring, habitual, meaningless and without growth.
This boring, habitual kind of life leads to inertia; a waking sleep, a living death. Much time and energy are spent on satisfying our security addictions and there is little or no energy left for emotional, mental or spiritual growth.

4. Fear is also the cause and result of a feeling of vulnerability and mistrust. When we feel insecure, we feel threatened by unfamiliar situations or people, thus explaining the development of racial hatred, religious intolerance, and international tensions and war. We mistrust each other and act in defensive and often offensive ways in order to protect ourselves from the imagined danger.

5. When we fear, our reason is nullified and our imagination runs wild, creating the worst possible scenarios, which are usually far from the actual reality.

6. Perception is distorted and we misinterpret others’ intentions and actions. When our reason is sufficiently overcome by a panicking imagination, we are moved to prejudice, narrow-mindedness, anger, hate, and in extreme cases aggression, violence, cruelty and war. Even in cases where we do not get carried to such extremes, our relationships usually suffer. It is not possible to be open and loving when we are insecure and fearful.

7. Such irrational behavior reaches its climax in the mob mentality. When many human beings gather into in a large group, their mentality often tends to be reduced to that of the lowest of the group’s members. This can be likened to a chain, which is as strong as its weakest link. Large groups of people are not much different in their instinctual reactions from herds of animals and flocks of birds. If one panics in fear, all follow. We often hear of hundreds of persons injured and even trampled to death at soccer matches, demonstrations, and other large gatherings.

8. Living in fear means living with a constant underlying tension. There will be frequent secretions by the adrenal glands as unfamiliar persons and events will cause alarm and elicit the "fight or flight" response. This is exhausting for the nervous, immune and endocrine systems. The pituitary gland and hypothalamus are thrown out of balance, and the immune system becomes run down, setting the stage for a variety of physical and mental illnesses. Health and happiness flee from fear.

9. Perhaps the most unfortunate result of fear is that it acts like a magnet, literally attracting to us to the very things that we fear the most. Fearful thoughts are like magnetic waves which subconsciously interact with the world around us, attracting to us those exact situations and experiences that cause us to be frightened. If we fear thieves, we increase the possibility of encountering them. The same would be true of dogs, cockroaches, spiders, etc.

We do not, however, create the death of a loved one by fearing that. We do not create the others’ reality.

Attracting what we fear is actually very useful for our growth process because it forces us to face and become familiar with the things that we fear, which is the first step towards overcoming them. Many of us have discovered by experience that our fear of an event had been out of proportion to the problem actually created by that feared event, and that our fear was entirely unnecessary.

10. Fear is also our greatest obstacle to moving forward in our lives. Every fear is like a closed door that prevents us from researching, growing and developing in many aspects of our lives.

We will investigate the causes and solutions to fear in the remaining sections of this series.
Article Source: http://articles-galore.com