Monica Bhatia : Three Issues

"Only Thing we have to FEAR is fear itself" - FDR's First Inaugural Address


Fear is:

Animal/Instinctual

Learned (by example)

not as prevalent in children

triggered by media

financial fear in relation to the current economic state – fear of not finding a job, keeping a job, or being able to support oneself and family

1. The Economist – Magazine

2. Corey Robin – political theorist and author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea

3. Ricardo Caballero – MIT's Ford International Professor of Economics

fear of illness, the irrational fear of doctors, new procedures in medicine, the dentist, health insurance, communicability disease from SARS to the swine flu how parents condition children to be fearful of germs and injuries

1. Joseph E. LeDoux - Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety at NYU

2. Philip Alcabes – Author of Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu

3. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden - New York City Health Commissioner from 2002–2009

the epidemic of irrational fears - terrorist attacks, pedophiles on the internet, global warmining, ecoli, huicanes and earthquakes, new technologies

1. Daniel Gardner – author of The Science of Fear

2. Wole Soyinka – Former political prisoner and author of Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World.

3. Elizabeth Phelps – NYU Phelps Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience of emotion and memory