Exploring the Nature of Fear: What Do People Fear the Most and Possible Correlation with the Spiral Dynamics
All of us, in one way or another, have fears in our lives. Of course, everyone has fears, but this does not change the essence because their nature is always the same. But still, what do people fear most of all? What is the spirit of fear, and can we fight it?
To answer these questions thoroughly and exhaustively, we would have to write more than one three-volume book because this topic is deep and vast. But we will make a small attempt to clarify these things, in small. And we should start with the definition of fear as such.
What is fear?
Fear is an internal human state caused by a perceived or actual threatened calamity. Psychology views fear as an emotional process with a negative connotation.
According to the American psychologist Carroll Ellis Izard's theory of differential emotions, fear belongs to the basic emotions; in other words, it is innate - its physiological component, facial expressions, and specific subjective experiences have a genetic basis.
Fear drives a person to avoid danger, adjust his behavior in a certain way, and perform various actions that he believes can protect him.
Everyone has their fears: from the banal fear of insects or mice to the fear of poverty and death. There are even phobias - persistent, irrational fears of something. In short, as many people as there are fears. But some fears are common to many people; people fear the same things. Below we have listed the most "popular" fears that concern people all over the world:
trypophobia - fear or disgust of closely packed holes,
acrophobia - fear of heights,
agoraphobia - fear of open spaces,
apeirophobia - fear of eternity,
arachnophobia - fear of spiders,
claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces,
emetophobia - fear of vomiting or seeing others being sick,
megalophobia - fear of large objects or things,
thalassophobia - fear of large and deep bodies of water (sea, oceans, pools, or lakes),
see the full list of fears below after the charts.
According to the Spiral Dynamics theory, a person goes through different stages in his development (spiral turns, colors). As the external conditions of life change, so do fears. Is there a connection between a person's fears and their stages of development (spiral turns, colors)? How random or stable is this connection? Mathematics in psychology answers these questions used by Dr. Clare W. Graves, who developed Spiral Dynamics.
As Ben Yoskovitz, co-author of Lean Analytics, wrote:
“Finding a correlation between two metrics is a good thing. Correlations can help you predict what will happen. But finding the cause of something means you can change it. Usually, causations aren’t simple one-to-one relationships–there are lots of factors at play, but even a degree of causality is valuable.
You prove causality by finding a correlation, then running experiments where you control the other variables and measure the difference. It’s hard to do, but causality is really an analytics superpower–it gives you the power to hack the future.”
Below you can read an abridged version of the results of our VUCA poll “Fears“. The full results of our VUCA poll “Fears“ are available for free in the FAQ section after login or registration.
