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Neophobia

Neophobia is the fear of new things or experiences. It is also called cainotophobia. In psychology, neophobia is defined as the persistent and abnormal fear of anything new. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine. more...

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The term is also used to describe anger, frustration or trepidation toward new things and toward change in general. Some conservative and reactionary groups are often described as neophobic, in their attempts to preserve traditions or revert society to a perceived past form. Technophobia can be seen as a specialized form of neophobia, by fearing new technology.

Robert Anton Wilson theorized, in his book Prometheus Rising, that neophobia is instinctual in people after they become parents and begin to raise children. Wilson's views on neophobia are mostly negative, believing that it is the reason human culture and ideas do not advance as quickly as our technology. His model includes an idea from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is that new ideas, however well-proven and evident, are implemented only when the generations who consider them 'new' die and are replaced by generations who consider the ideas accepted and old.

Wilson assumes that people do not think most of the time, and believes that the rational mind usually justifies instinctual activity rather than actually drive action.

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Only the timid die young; do overactive stress hormones damage health?
From Psychology Today, 3/1/04 by Carlin Flora

FEARFUL TYPES MAY MEET THEIR MAKER SOONER, AT least among rats. Researchers have for the first time connected a personality trait--fear of novelty--to an early death.

Sonia Cavigelli and Martha McClintock, psychologists at the University of Chicago, presented unfamiliar bowls, tunnels and bricks to a group of young male rats. Those hesitant to explore the mystery objects were classified as "neophobic."

The researchers found that the neophobic rats produced high levels of stress hormones, called glucocorticoids--typically involved in the fight-or-flight stress response--when faced with strange situations. Those rats continued to have high levels of the hormones at random times throughout their lives, indicating that timidity is a fixed and stable trait. The team then set out to examine the cumulative effects of this personality trait on the rats' health.

Timid rats were 60 percent more likely to die at any given time then were their outgoing brothers. The causes of death were similar for both groups. "One hypothesis as to why the neophobic rats died earlier is that the stress hormones negatively affected their immune system," Cavigelli says. Neophobes died, on average, three months before their rat brothers, a significant gap, considering that most rats lived only two years.

Shyness--the human equivalent of neophobia--can be detected in infants as young as 14 months. Shy people also produce more stress hormones than "average," or thrill-seeking humans. But introverts don't necessarily stay shy for life, as rats apparently do. Jerome Kagan, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, has found that while 15 out of every 100 children will be born with a shy temperament, only three will appear shy as adults. None, however, will be extroverts.

Extrapolating from the doomed fate of neophobic rats to their human counterparts is difficult. "But it means that something as simple as a personality trait could have physiological consequences," Cavigelli says.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Sussex Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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