Kaleidoscope - Volume 222 , Issue 2

Tracy, Derek K.; Joyce, Dan W.; Albertson, Dawn N.; Shergill, Sukhwinder S.

Abstract

In de Wildeman is the lead author's favourite bar in Amsterdam. As well as having the best beers and most knowledgeable and friendly staff, its door-sign is of a gruff Neanderthal or early Homo sapiens. Musing about this over some of Holland's finest brews made Tracy ponder early humans, in particular juxtaposing their stereotypic brutish caveman image against the evident complex emotional lives they must have had. Fortuitously, multiple papers in this month's column tap into this. Homo sapiens – us – are notably disproportionately more fearful than other primates from infancy onwards, something that at first glance (and indeed in a bulk of the psychological literature) might feel maladaptive, and indeed it is a trait that is associated with the development of anxiety and depression. GrossmannReference Grossmann1 offers a solution via the fearful ape hypothesis. Reviewed empirical ontogenic data show that greater expressed infant fearfulness, and its perception by mothers, elicits enhanced our species-unique levels of care-based responding and provisioning. Further, it produces greater cooperation within local social networks. ‘We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light’ taught Plato. Long seen as maladaptive, this darkest of emotions may have a central role in human bonding. Intriguingly, Grossmann's work offers up a putative answer to the conundrum of greater rates of affective disorders in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) societies, where fearfulness may be more maladaptive in societies marked by individualism and less on cooperative care.

• Journal Article Type: Editorial
• Acceptance Date: Jan 30, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jan 30, 2023
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jun 21, 2023
• Journal: The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science
• Print ISSN: 0007-1250
• Electronic ISSN: 1472-1465
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 222
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 93-94
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2022.187
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10880996
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/kaleidoscope/0F8BB462661E5B053E429DA17A364E24