A new study shows that anxious people are much better at perceiving and reacting to a slow-developing threat (not surprising), but no better at reacting to a quickly-developing threat than their happy-go-lucky neighbor.
Specifically, participants with higher trait anxiety escaped much quicker from the menacing threat of a slowly encroaching virtual predator than did those with lower anxiety.
However, when the virtual predator pounced immediately, there was no difference between the more and less anxious participants.
To put it into day-to-day terms:
Let’s say you’re an anxious person, and you see a mole on your arm that’s kind of sketchy. You’ll probably get it checked out before it turns into a melanoma. See, slow-developing threat.
Your optimistic neighbor, Bob, on the other hand, might wait until it’s bleeding, throbbing, and 12 inches in diameter.
He wasn’t good at reacting to the slow-developing threat.
Now let’s say both you and Bob’s hair is on fire. You’ll be equally good at responding to that threat, because it develops quickly.
So why are some people quicker at responding to slow-developing threats than others?
Well, it all has to do with the part of the brain that’s triggered by slow-developing threats vs. immediate threats.
Slow-developing threats trigger heightened activity in our hippocampus, which is the area of the brain responsible for planning and assessing risk.
Meanwhile, immediate threats trigger reactions in the fear circuit, which is in the central part of our brain.
There’s actually a lot of spiritual application here for a different time and day, but at the top of the list is that we should be very careful about judging more anxious people.
The planning-based portion of their brain is activated much more quickly, and that’s not a sinful thing.
In fact, it could be that those with higher trait anxiety will save the lives of their optimistic friends who choose to wait to act until they can actually see the flames on the ship.
Painting: Approaching Thunderstorm, Martin Johnson Heade.
