ABSTRACT
Perhaps no other psychological motive has played such a dominant role in shap ing the past, present, and future destiny of the human race than the emotion of fear. Fear provided the motivation for our ancestors to band together in groups, to develop weapons for protection, and to create superstitions to explain the unknown. Fear has played a major role in the struggle for human survival and in the facilitation of human death-in the creation of war and in the need to seek peace. Fear can motivate success and produce failure; make a hero out of a coward and make a strong person weak; generate wealth and create poverty; foster con trol and facilitate compromise. Fear often modifies rational objectives with irra tional solutions, such as providing the major deterrent to prevent nuclear war, while at the same time providing the major motive to build even more destruc tive weapons. It is unlikely the human race would have survived and developed without the motivational effects of fear; yet ironically, because of fear, civiliza tion is now in danger of extinction.
