Looking for trouble: A common threat-detection mechanism underlying pain, fear, and anxiety
I put forward a novel cognitive architecture for pain, fear, and anxiety, according to which these three capacities are underpinned by a common threat-detection mechanism. This mechanism takes information about potential threats as input, assesses whether the threat is actual and, if it deems it is, outputs a threat representation. If this is correct, pain, fear, and anxiety turn out to be different manifestations of the same cognitive mechanism. I defend my proposal by discussing a large swath of convergent evidence from different quarters of the sciences of the mind.
Publication Details
- Journal
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York)
- Published
- 2025-11-11
- Primary Topic
- Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00