Why do we panic (evolutionarily speaking)?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In the ‘Airplane simulators: How can they be trusted?’ thread, one point brought up was that simulators can’t account for the panic reaction in an actual flight emergency. Which got me wondering, why do we often have a panic reaction to danger?

NOTE: my question is different than ‘why do we feel fear?’. I understand why, evolutionarily, we get that adrenaline rush ‘fight or flight’ reaction to danger. If a saber-toothed tiger is about to pounce, you fight it or you flee. Pretty simple. But why does that adrenaline rush fear reaction often result in a panicked response?

At first, thinking through it, I figured it’s because we evolved a fear response to more simple dangers, like that saber-toothed tiger. More complicated problems, like trying to safely land a damaged plane, is the type of thing our fear response did not evolve to deal with.

But then I thought of an example from my youth. When I was a little kid I was in a swimming pool and drifted off into the deep end. Once I realized I could not touch the bottom, I panicked. I could have dog-paddled and gotten to safety pretty easily, but instead I started flailing, waving my arms and yelling 'help!" until an adult came and got me. Then when I was a young adult, I was swimming in Lake Huron. It was very wavy that day, and at first it was fun, like a wave pool. Then I noticed that everybody else had gotten out of the water, I was literally in over my head, and the waves had increased in intensity. I started swimming back to shore, but every wave had a secondary backwards pull effect that kept bringing me back, so I was basically swimming in place. I started to feel panic, and got close to that place where, like when I was a kid, I’d start flailing, yelling ‘help!’ and hoping someone on shore could rescue me (no lifeguard on that stretch of beach). But then I managed to compose myself, and I focused on swimming as hard and efficiently as I’ve ever swum, and made it back to shore. But I came close to panic that day, and danger of drowning is definitely something our evolutionary ancestors faced.

So why does the fear reaction in a dangerous situation often cause us to panic, freeze up, and make mistakes, rather than focus us?

2

My guess (sorry I don’t have any good cites) is that the benefit of the flight-or-fight adrenaline rush is so huge that the downside of the “overload state” of panic is dwarfed in comparison.

Individuals with low adrenaline response die before child-birth. Those with super-high ones might also die (due to panic) but being on the higher end is better than the lower end. I would imagine that it’s “tuned” by natural selection to be just about as high as possible without being a constant state of panic.

I’d add that you can see in certain herds animals that they are tuned even closer to “panic” than humans are. So likely the closer you are to “constant prey” the more the pendulum swing to “panic is OK, because they really are always out to eat you”.

ETA: I guess a simpler way to say it is that panic and fear are likely linked, and you probably can’t get one response without the risk of the other. It’s better to have a high fear response and a chance of panic than a low fear response without a risk of panic.

3

My WAG: Having to instantly find complex solutions to life-threatening problems is a recent development in the human condition. You don’t have to think all that critically to run fast and hard away from a threat, which is all we had to do for a long time.

Now we have all this fancy executive function capability which creates a lot more complicated problems. Problem is when we’re faced with a threat, we’re being operated primarily by our amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, and that fancy executive function is very hard to access. You might think of it as an internal battle between different systems in the brain. This is why treatment for panic attacks often involves interoceptive exposure therapy which enables the client to cope more effectively with their body in that ultra-aroused state. The end goal is often to get that sympathetic nervous system to calm down enough for reason to take over.

(I should also mention here that panic is often perpetuated by thought, namely the link between, “My body is super aroused right now” and “this means I’m going to die.” We’ve got to cut that thought off at the knees. Through exposure and cognitive restructuring, people learn that this bodily sensation is just that, and death is not a likely outcome. Since most people don’t experience panic on a regular basis it is easy to underestimate how difficult it is to navigate in the moment and what heroic effort it takes to do something like exposure therapy where reaching a state of panic is the goal.)

4

In most survival situations in the wild your best bet is likely immediate escape. I don’t think it’s a lot more complex than that.

5

There’s also no reason it should be selected ‘for’. Even if it can be an issue for individuals, as long as it is not enough of a problem that enough people still reproduce, it won’t necessarily be selected ‘against’.

6

Yeah, but like I said in my OP, I thought of that at first, but then I thought of the possibility of drowning, which is something our ancestors faced and can cause panic.

I think @Jas09 probably has it-- the overwhelming fear response leading to panic is not ideal for all situations, but it was good enough for survival of the species-- for every one of our ancestors who drowned because they panicked, maybe ten saved themselves because they ran like crazy from a saber-toothed tiger.

ETA: or, this:

7

I’m not really buying the “immediate panicked escape is what humans adapted to do” explanation. Any large predator or big angry herbivore can outsprint us but not the antelope; you make a mad dash and spend your energy and breath, and still end up eaten / trampled / gored.

8

It’s possible that panic is just a byproduct of a super elevated sympathetic nervous system, and the latter is something you need for that mad dash.

9

Ok, I like that my question is generating a bit of discussion, without just a simple “case closed” answer. I can almost buy the “overwhelming fear / panic response has helped more than than it hurt us, so didn’t get selected against” argument, but it still kind of bugs me that we do tend to panic and freeze up in the very worst situations. The expression ‘deer in the headlights’ comes to mind. And it’s a good point that predators have always been larger, faster and stronger than us. Our evolutionary edge has long been our intelligence and ability to use tools and manipulate our environment. So why, as proto-humans, did we not evolve to not only have the adrenaline fear response to danger, but also to be more focused, not less focused?

10

It’s simply the “Fight or Flight” response to danger that all creatures have. I’m quite sure that any that didn’t have it are extinct.

11

I would think the panic mode is not evolutionary. We have glitches, and we are imperfect, is all.

12

Maybe it has something to do with knowledge of our own mortality? Animals never think, wait, I might die here! Holy crap, what do I do? Ack! But, humans go that extra step maybe that’s our downfall.

So, a side effect of our big brain?

ETA: Or, maybe it’s our relative unfamiliarity with life-or-death situations, since we generally live pretty cushy lives relative to just about any wild animals. Do people who live really dangerous lives in war situations or whatever panic as often?

13

We have the biochemical apparatus that enables the fight or flight response; we don’t have so much of the conditioned experience (from play fighting as juveniles, from running from danger along with parents that are also running etc) that would allow us to do something useful with it.

14

Thread made me wonder - how often do people panic, and in response to what sorts of situations? Did people always “panic” the way the word is used today? I often hear people speak of “panic attacks.” Taking such people at their word, is this something that would have been as common previously? Or is it an attribute of modern society?

I could accept that panic is an extreme, and generally undesirable exaggeration of fight/flight. Maybe “run away” might be useful. But not if excessive. Not sure “panic in deep water” has an evolutionary basis. As opposed to - say - stay out of deep water.

15

Hmm, you might have something here…despite the overwhelming evolutionary advantage our intelligence and cleverness in manipulating our environment has conferred, there may be an aspect there where our tendency to sometimes ‘overthink’ things gets us mentally overwhelmed.

Just to define the nomenclature a little, when I talk about ‘panic’ in this thread, I’m specifically referring to the tendency, when under pressure or faced with danger, we often tend to freeze up, forget things we normally know by heart, and make mistakes. As opposed to a ‘panic attack’ or ‘anxiety attack’. I can easily accept anxiety as a side effect of our fear response, especially as humans with our big brains and our knowledge of mortality and such, as RitterSport pointed out.

But why does fear and anxiety make us less focused, not more focused, or in other words, ‘make us panic’, is my question.

16

Because many predators are faster than us, freezing in place is sometimes more likely to save you than running. The predator may not see someone who doesn’t move — that’s presumably why rabbits often freeze in place. Also, running indicates that you’re prey; standing your ground may indicate that you’ve got reason to think you can fight back; even in our modern lives, when faced with an aggressive dog running is likely to be the wrong thing to do.

So sometimes a panic freeze can be adaptive; though sometimes running is the right thing to do. If you’re part of a group, the predator will probably just catch the slowest and the others will get away — though if you’re part of a hominin group, you may together be able to chase the predator off. If you’re close to a tree and can climb better than the predator, running makes sense.

But choosing whether to run or freeze or fight does take thinking that won’t get done in panic. So I understand the issue. I suspect it’s partly a matter that our ancestors mostly had more practice thinking through adrenaline, and partly that overall the benefits of the adrenaline reaction outweighed the downsides.

17

I don’t even think it needs to help in any situation.

Just as long as it doesn’t hurt us too much collectively. It can be a detriment on average and still exist as a trait as long as it does not affect our collective ability to breed

18

Whenever the question is “why did X evolve to do Y” I like to reframe it as “because their ancestors that didn’t do Y were less likely survive.” Since humans are a social species, panicking and crying was probably more survivable because it alerted other nearby humans to come help. Even freezing in panic could be advantageous against predators that are triggered by movement, and curling up into a ball is perhaps a better defensive measure than attempting to fight a hopeless fight. The panic-eyness of prey species clearly benefits them, and it could be as simple as a means of alerting the herd that a danger is present. Remember that an evolutionary advantage could be realized by the group instead of the individual.

A similar example is why do we and many other animals shit themselves when scared/startled? Because our ancestors that didn’t do that were less likely to survive. :slight_smile: The specific reason seems to be that it distracted enough predators to be beneficial. Whether the act itself is a visual distraction, or more likely it’s an olfactory distraction that conveniently lands between the predator and the fleeing prey, it doesn’t really matter.

Deer in headlights is its own particular phenomenon. The reason they freeze is because they’re suddenly blinded, just like you would be if your eyes were adjusted to the dark and you looked at a bright light. They can’t see anything else but the lights getting bigger in a black void. There’s no evolutionary adaption to that.

19

I think you’re on to something here. I’m framing the panic response of freaking out, crying, waving arms around and yelling ‘help!’ as a useless or actively disadvantageous reaction, but in a social setting, it may have been helpful, evolutionary speaking, and still may be, for the most part. Well, yelling for help can certainly be, well, helpful, but you get my meaning.

If I’m ever in a dangerous setting and I freak out, panic, cry, scream for help, freeze, and / or crap myself, if people are looking at me contemptuously after the danger has passed I will say “no, you’re wrong. I am a hero!” :grin:

I kid, but I do think you have a really good theory.

20

I understood what you meant. I just don’t know that I accept your premise that humans, in general, “often tend to freeze up.” Not necessarily saying humans DON’T, just saying I’m not certain they DO.

Personally, I don’t recall “freezing up.” Of course, I also don’t recall being in a ton of life threatening situations.

Something possibly related, I recall reading recently about the perception of time slowing down when stressed. So, in at least some situations, at least some people seem to - uh - perceive more time to respond to a threat. I could imagine arguing in support of the proposition that fear and anxiety tneds to make people MORE focussed. And possibly some people overly panic because they have such safe, boring, comfortable lives that they can afford to. And possibly some such “panic” is in response to things that are not really objectively threatening.

I referred to panic attacks, because in my job I often hear people describe experiencing paic and anxiety attacks. I cannot dispute their description of their self perception. But I’m not sure how reliable data such descriptions offer.