Against her mom’s warnings, UC Berkeley political scientist Marika Landau-Wells watched Arachnaphobia as a kid. Ever since, she has been terrified of spiders. But over the years, she has learned to reason with her quick fear response — No, that spider is not 8 feet in diameter — and calmly trap them and put them outside.

We all encounter problems like this, she says, where we have quick reactions to things we’ve learned to fear. It might be something that is actually dangerous that we really should quickly react to, but it could also be a tiny, non-threatening spider. 

Each time, we have to decide what kind of problem it is and then how to respond. She says this task is especially hard today because we're inundated with messages trying to hijack our fear response, from junky online ads to the way politicians speak.

Landau-Wells studies how we make these kinds of decisions, and what influences how we act, especially in situations where there’s a lot on the line.

This is the fourth episode of our eight-part series on transformation. In eight episodes, we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley. New episodes of the series come out on the last Monday of each month. See all episodes of the series.

Key takeaways:

• We learn what to be afraid of; once we fear something, it’s hard to change our perception.
• We’re bombarded with messaging trying to hijack our quick fear responses.
• Research on how the brain processes fear could help us persuade people to see dangers differently and influence how world leaders make decisions.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Image by Sara Oliveira/Unsplash+

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