Some excellent
experiments in behavioral research were conducted by Professor
Susan Mineka in the eighties. She worked with monkeys and
videotapes, and unlike most recorded work featuring monkeys from
the eighties, hers did not feature skateboards, wacky escapes from
inept hitmen or even a single harebrained scheme to raise funds for
the local youth center. It was about fear.
Wild monkeys are
deathly afraid of snakes - to the point where they'll starve to
death rather than reach across even a fake snake to get food.
Since learning this fear by experience is a literally short-lived
solution, this fear was thought to be hereditary. Monkeys
born in captivity exhibited no such fear, however, which seemed to
hole the hereditary idea - until Mineka got together some primates
for the ultimate horror movie.
By showing some monkeys footage of a wild monkey utterly
terrified of snakes, she triggered the same hysterical responses in
those who had never seen the object of fear, would never see it and
were never going to be at any risk from it. We can't comment
on whether the Department of Homeland Security read this
research. Further, attempts to trigger a fear of flowers by
showing fake footage of a monkey scared of plants failed. It seemed
that the "snakes suck" wiring was always there, but until it was
externally triggered it never manifested.
The same research also showed how to combat these phobic
trip-switches: by showing them a monkey that wasn't scared of
snakes, even if that was a fake monkey, the terror-reaction was
strongly reduced. Which technically means you could make a
child immune to letting them watch Chuck Norris movies when
young. Because all these phobic-factors seem as applicable to
humans as they are to other primates, with applications in
child-rearing and anxiety management. They weren't just doing
this research because somebody wanted the job "monkey
frightener."
Posted by Luke McKinney.
Genes affect phobias http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ridley03/ridley_p5.html
Anxiety Disorder research http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/emotion/Mineka.html