Fear
emotion induced by perceived danger or threat
Fear is an emotional state which is aroused by threatening situations. It is usually considered to be a negative, unpleasant emotion. The feeling of fear can result directly from certain kinds of sensory stimulation, such as sounds which resemble screaming. Fear can also be evoked by the anticipation that undesirable events will, or may, occur, and is useful in providing motivation to avoid or mitigate risks. It may also be the result of imagining threats to oneself or others, whether or not those threats are real or possible.
Fear is associated with a number of physiological states. In humans, fear is correlated with more rapid breathing and heart rate, dilation of the pupils, spikes in cortisol levels, and elevated electrodermal activity. These changes overlap considerably with the physiology of anger, sadness, disgust, anxiety, and other negative, arousing emotions. Fear is also associated with behavioural reactions like the startle response, the fight-or-flight response, and the freeze response.
The physiological and behavioural effects of fear are not unique to humans, and have routinely been used to identify fear in both non-human vertebrates and invertebrates.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fear” as emotion induced by perceived danger or threat. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q44619. The Library of Congress control number is sh85047514. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fear” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.