

The Science of Fear
Why We Fear the Things We Should not- and Put Ourselves in Great Danger
Author: Daniel Gardner
Narrator: Scott Peterson
Unabridged: 12 hr 8 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Ascent Audio
Published: 07/20/2009
Categories: Nonfiction, Psychology
Synopsis
The Science of Fear is a disarmingly cheerful roundtrip shuttle to the new brain science, dissecting the fears that misguide and manipulate us every day.
As award-winning journalist Daniel Gardner demonstrates, irrational fear springs from how humans miscalculate risks. Our hunter-gatherer brains evolved during the old Stone Age and struggle to make sense of a world utterly unlike the one that made them. Numbers, for instance, confuse us. Our “gut” tells us that even if there aren’t “fifty thousand predators…on the Internet prowling for children,” as a recent U.S. Attorney General claimed, then there must be an awful lot. And even if our “head” discovers that the number is baseless and no one actually knows the truth—there could be one hundred thousand or five—we are still more fearful simply because we heard the big number. And it is not only politicians and the media that traffic in fearmongering. Corporations fatten their bottom lines with fear. Interest groups expand their influence with fear. Officials boost their budgets with fear. With more information, warnings and scary stories coming at us every day from every direction, we are more prone than ever to needlessly worry.
Real-world examples, interviews with experts, and fast-paced, lean storytelling make The Science of Fear an entertaining and enlightening tour. Ultimately, by revealing the psychology behind the many ways our “gut” reactions lead us astray and allow others to manipulate us. The Science of Fear will make you brave.