Question: why are people scared of things? is it to do with having a special gene?

Lilian Hunt answered on 10 Mar 2014:

A really good question! For years we have believed that fear is something you learn in life, possibly through a bad experience or something similar. Our fears are normally there to work as a survival tactic – it’s a good thing to be scared of lions and tigers as it stops you getting eaten, it’s a good thing to be a bit scared of heights as it stops you falling and hurting yourself. However some people have what we call ‘irrational fears’ and these are normally the result of a childhood traumatic event, like the fear of buttons because you accidentally swallowed one as a child.

However there has now been some evidence in mice that fear can be inherited, which means it would have something to do with our DNA. Although the study doesn’t give any evidence of ‘fear genes’ or mutations in our DNA that cause fear, it does suggest that when a mouse is taught to be scared of something, this can alter the mouse’s DNA in a way that can be passed to its children. Then the new baby mice are scared of the same thing (a smell in this case) even though they have never experienced it before and have no real reason to be scared of it except for this inherited fear they got from their mother. It’s not exactly a gene that causes it but it is something to do with a change in their DNA! Pretty cool stuff, but also a lot of unanswered questions in this topic!