FuturePundit reports:

Propranolol Permanently Reduces Human Fear Response

There's nothing to fear but fear itself - and even that can be eliminated with a drug treatment.

A team of Dutch researchers under the leadership of Vici-winner Merel Kindt has successfully reduced the fear response. They weakened fear memories in human volunteers by administering the beta-blocker propranolol. Interestingly, the fear response does not return over the course of time. Top journal Nature Neuroscience published the findings on 15 February 2009.

Until recently, it was assumed that the fear memory could not be deleted. However, Klindt's team has demonstrated that changes can indeed be effected in the emotional memory of human beings.

The researchers found that if they caused humans to remember a fearful memory (seeing a picture of a spider and at the same moment feeling pain) and administered propranolol that reduced the fear response when spider pictures were shown again at a later date.

The memory of connections between two events were still recallable but no longer elicited the feeling of fear.

Randall Parker comments:

Got any fear response you want to dampen down?

I wonder what would happen if people were shown a politician's picture while someone described a policy that they feared. Would they lose their fear higher taxes or their fear of a reduction of the welfare state? Could people be conditioned to accept (or at least object to less strongly) policies that they currently oppose? Could captured spies get treated with propranolol to reduce their fear if what happens they they divulge secret information while undergoing interrogation?

I think the political example is really interesting. I wrote a while back that fear of the future, like fear of the other, is an evolutionary response that is largely misapplied in this era. Both fears still serve a useful basic function, but they have been picked up and carried along by sets of memes that have little to do with protecting us from any real danger and that make it harder for us to capitalize on opportunities. The fear of the other has been co-opted by political ideology and intensified by the fact that we have made good progress (at least in some parts of society) of eliminating other bases for considering someone "other." Ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation -- these do not define an "other" that it is any longer acceptable to fear.

But liberal or conservative? Look out. The visceral reaction that a typical Kos Kid feels when looking at a picture of Sarah Palin, or that a Freeper feels when seeing Ted Kennedy, probably has more to do with the mammal brain's reflex at sensing a reptile nearby than any reasoned policy differences. The opposite side of the aisle has become the dreaded Other and, being about the only Other we're allowed to have, has become quite the bogeyman.

To Randall's question, what if you take this fear out of the equation? Suddenly policy ideas simply become policy ideas. You might very well still disagree with them, but they (or rather the people who hold them) don't necessarily trigger fear or revulsion. I think that would be a distinct improvement, but I'm not sure that beta-blockers are required . After all, we have memetically programmed ourselves (or allowed ourselves to be programmed) to initiate a fear-of-other response to political ideas we disagree with. If willing, I'm guessing we ought to be able to deprogram ourselves, too.

Of course, there are many other possible applications for fear inhibitors. They might be helpful for terminal patients (who want them.) On a similar note, would state laws require administering fear inhibitors to prisoners on death row? Would athletes benefit for them, or would they end up destroying themselves in short order? The same questions would apply to police, firefighters, military personnel. Fear of danger/pain acts as a powerful preventative agent. If you remove it, some people might become more effective at performing certain tasks, but that would likely come at a high cost to their personal safety.

Another potential application would be removing social fear and anxiety. Take away the fear of rejection and the fear of looking ridiculous, and people might start doing some really remarkable things. Most of the truly successful people in the world have found a way to subjugate those fears, but -- as with soldiers and the fear of danger -- maybe subjugation gives better results than elimination. A world without social fear might very well be one of high achievement, but it might also be a world full to the brim of unbelievably pushy and obnoxious people.

Then we might need a new drug to help us cope with all those jerks.