Don’t ask me where I heard it, I just recall enough to repeat it…
Somewhere, I got the idea that human babies are born with only two instinctive fears: loud noises and falling. All other fears are the result of experience and conditioning.
Refute/Support this?
From what I’ve seen of babies (most notably my own), babies don’t have a fear of falling or of loud noises. In fact, most babies are oblivious to loud noises, showing no reaction at all (I’m not sure about VERY loud noises, such as the firing of a gun- never tried that!)
Arjuna34
My mom used to go on about how the nurse nearly dropped me when she handed me over to her after I was born, and how I screamed for 10 minutes after that. So I only have my my mom’s anectodotal evidence for that.
I, too, question whether infant humans are born with fears of falling and of loud noises. I do, however, suspect that infant primates are born with a fear of things that look like snakes. I base this on an experience at the botanical gardens at Mbandaka (ex-Coquilhatville) in Congo (Kinshasa). Someone with an infant chimpanzee on his back walked up to an enclosure with a very large snake and the chimp freaked out. I doubt that the chimp had ever seen snake before, let alone had a bad experience with one. Admittedly, this is a sample of one, but it was impressive. Maybe a fear of snakes is inborn in humans but quickly unlearnt by the vast majority of men and by a slightly lower proportion of women.
IIRC my Psych 101 text said that infants have almost no depth perception; they don’t develop it until they start to walk. This would preclude a fear of falling, I guess.
Yeah, it was not snake, the baby saw you! 
Seriosly speaking, how can you fear something you never experienced?
So, babies are born without fears and gradually learn, what to be afraid of. Stupid people, for instance.
Instincts are a different matter.
“Fear” of hights (depth) might be instictive, but babys’ vision is underdeveloped, they can’t see the Grand Canyon.
I hope I’m not breaking any copyright rules here…its not proper referencing format in any style, but…
“When presented with drawings that use texture-gradient to make some objects appear to be in the foreground and others in the background, infants will reach for an object in the foreground” (Lester Sdorow,Psychology, McGraw-Hill 1998).
Hence, there is, at the least, monocular depth perception.
Also, in infants as young as 6 months old, there was the visual cliff experiment developed by Elenor Gibson and Richard Walk in the 60s. A thick sheet of glass is placed on a table, with the “shallow” end has a checkerboard surface just below the glass, while the deep end has the same surface a few feet below the glass. An infant (6 to 14 months) who is able to crawl will crawl across the shallow end, but not across the deep end to reach his/her mother.
Hence, these infants can percieve depth. This does not preclude the possibility that they can do so before they can crawl.
That totally does not answer the OP, but I think it would make sense for depth perception, at least, to be innate. Obviously, there is some degree of this anyways, since (most) infants have 2 eyes, and depth perception can even be determined with only one eye via monocular depth cues, but whether there is any comprehension…? Evolutionary-wise, it would be beneficial. Wouldnt it reduce the likelihood of death or injury in young?
Since I brought “depth” into this…
I know that aninal young have this “depth fear”; the very “cliff experiment”, IIRC, was copied after animal experiments, including B&W tiles at the bottom. Probably, it’s instinctive, not learned, and is beneficial, of course.
I am afraid of heights even now (although I’d cross the glass).
I should clarify this.
I heard babies only fear loud noises or falling. Now, maybe some babies can hear loud noises unfazed, but I remember having to keep the pet dogs out of the house because they would make my baby brother cry. And while I wouldn’t shoot guns around babies, either, certain loud TV commercials are enough to upset my nephew.
But with regard to falling, it seems the sensation of falling can make some babies cry. I remember playing around with my nephew when he was almost a year old; I was tossing him in the air on the bed and after the third toss he let out a scream that let me know he did NOT like it. (My sister, who ran in the room afterwards, wasn’t too pleased either) This is a kid who likes tickling and roughousing and since he wasn’t hurt, I wondered if this ‘instinctive fear’ thing had any basis to it…
One problem is how old a baby we’re talking about. By the time a baby’s a year old, he/she is aware of much more to be afraid of. A newborn (<1 month) on the other hand, is what I was refering to in my earlier post about noises.
Also, just about anything can set a newborn to crying, so it’s hard to judge whether it was afraid, except by recognizing the cry (generally only possible by the parents).
Arjuna34
A long time ago, I read a (fiction) book in which a character said something similar to the OP-- that humans are born with three instinctive fears: the dark, falling, and reptiles. Of course, the latter fear was central to the plot of the book, so it’s automatically suspect. The other two sound plausible, though.
Thing is, though, I’ve never heard of any evidence to back this “innate fears” idea up. The only thing I could think of that had to do with babies and fears was the case of Little Albert, from the 1920s. Doctors studying fear response and babies conditioned this poor kid to be terrified of a white rat. (He later generalized this to a fear of anything furry, even cute, happy stuffed animals.) They did this by classical conditioning. They’d let him play with the rat, and then scare the living hell out of him by making a sudden, loud noise. Eventually, Albert associated the presence of any furry object with being terrifed; all they had to do to get him screaming was show him something furry. Now, you’d have a hard time getting a study even close to this done today, because of the ethical concerns. (IIRC they did “undo” :rolleyes: the conditioned fear response, but how well they did it and whether one can really “unlearn” a fear like that is anyone’s guess. Albert’s identity was protected, so what became of him is unclear.) I’m not sure how you could test something like innate fears anyway; you can’t really ask a baby to answer a questionnaire or sit for an interview. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure on this one.
Just because a child finds something unpleasant and makes them cry, it doesn’t mean that there is an instinctive or protective basis for their dislike of it. I didn’t care for raw tomatoes as a kid (still don’t), but I doubt that the aversion is serving to protect me in any way.
I’ve got a really cool picture of this experiment in action that I wish I could scan and post (don’t want to because of copyright concerns I’m too tired to look up right now). It shows a toddler sitting at the seam of a checkerboard surface and a Plexiglass surface. Through the Plexiglass you can see how the checkerboard surface ends, caving out, sort of. Waiting on the other end of the Plexiglass is a woman, presumably the toddler’s mother, holding her arms out to him. The kid could easily cross the Plexiglass to the woman, but he’s clearly hesitant. He can see through the Plexiglass and how the checkered surface bottoms out, so he thinks he’ll fall if he moves any farther towards her.
However, I don’t think this shows an innate fear of falling. I think that by a certain age, children understand the concept of falling and are aware the cues that serve to warn them of it. To the kid, invisibility of surface=nonexistence of surface, so he doesn’t know that he could safely cross the Plexiglass.