The Silver Lining Around Fearful Living

This paper discusses in layperson’s terms human and computational studies of the impact of threat and fear on exploration and creativity. A first study showed that both killifish from a lake with predators and from a lake without predators explore a new environment to the same degree and plotting number of new spaces covered over time generates a hump-shaped curve. However, for the fish from the lake with predators the curve is shifted to the right; they take longer. This pattern was replicated by a computer model of exploratory behavior varying only one parameter, the fear parameter. A second study showed that stories inspired by threatening photographs were rated as more creative than stories inspired by non-threatening photographs. Various explanations for the findings are discussed. We are so intimately connected to the world we live in. Not just with what is immediately around us, but also with what is happening on the other side of the globe. We can instantly communicate with people of all cultures, and even see their homes and villages on Google maps. It’s fascinating. But if you think back to when you knew so much less about the world it seemed so tantalizingly full of wonder and possibility. It seems there is a tradeoff between that sense of mystery and how much you know. This got me thinking: one good thing about fear, other than it stops you from doing stupid, dangerous stuff, is that can hold you back from learning the facts inside out, which may help keep that creatively inspiring sense of wonder alive. A STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF THREAT ON EXPLORATORY BEHAVIOR These ideas date back to a study I carried out as a graduate student with killifish from two lakes: one with killifish predators and one without killifish predators. The fish were caught and put into a relatively small section of a large tank until they had acclimatized. This small section was separated from the rest of the tank by a door that was initially shut. The larger section contained objects that were unfamiliar to them.