Only humans feel terror with no danger present, due to the neocortex.
Evidence
And here’s the really tragic part of our condition: only we humans, due to our enlarged and sophisticated neocortex, can experience this terror in the absence of looming danger. Our death “waits like an old roué,” as the great Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel noted, lurking in the psychological shadows. This realization threatens to put us in a persistent state of existential fear. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 51
Categorization
- XREF: Resonates with terror management theory’s later elaboration that death reminders work even subliminally, in absence of actual threat.
- SHARE: The Jacques Brel quote ‘death waits like an old roué’ is a memorably dark line a reader with literary interests would enjoy.
Related
- People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses (similarity 0.80)
- Threatening cherished beliefs brings thoughts of death closer to awareness (similarity 0.80)
- Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.80)
- No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.80)
- Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem (similarity 0.79)
- Death’s most powerful influence operates unseen in normal life (similarity 0.79)
- Mortality awareness collides with survival instincts to produce existential terror (similarity 0.79)
- Conscious and unconscious death thoughts trigger different defense systems (similarity 0.79)
- Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats (similarity 0.79)