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128-403: A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society . It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers . Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling

256-470: A social constructionist approach to moral panics, challenging the assumption that sociology is able to define, measure, explain, and ameliorate social problems . Reviewing empirical studies in the social constructionist perspective, Goode and Ben-Yehuda produced an " attributional " model that identifies essential characteristics and placed more emphasis on strict definition than cultural processes. They arrived at five defining "elements", or "criteria", of

384-458: A Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls in the beard. Fear can be learned by experiencing or watching a frightening traumatic accident. For example, if a child falls into a well and struggles to get out, he or she may develop a fear of wells, heights ( acrophobia ), enclosed spaces ( claustrophobia ), or water ( aquaphobia ). There are studies looking at areas of the brain that are affected in relation to fear. When looking at these areas (such as

512-493: A camera into the field, while dealing with such issues as the observer effect . Issues with entry into the field have evolved into a separate subfield. Clifford Geertz 's famous essay on how to approach the multi-faceted arena of human action from an observational point of view, in Interpretation of Cultures uses the simple example of a human wink, perceived in a cultural context far from home. Such research involves

640-527: A chemical smelling of banana, and a component of bee alarm pheromone. The experiment also showed that the bees' fear-induced pain tolerance was mediated by an endorphin . By using the forced swimming test in rats as a model of fear-induction, the first mammalian "alarm substance" was found. In 1991, this "alarm substance" was shown to fulfill criteria for pheromones: well-defined behavioral effect, species specificity, minimal influence of experience and control for nonspecific arousal. Rat activity testing with

768-434: A child's psyche development or personality. For example, parents tell their children not to talk to strangers in order to protect them. In school, they would be motivated to not show fear in talking with strangers, but to be assertive and also aware of the risks and the environment in which it takes place. Ambiguous and mixed messages like this can affect their self-esteem and self-confidence. Researchers say talking to strangers

896-400: A cold person warmer or a frightened animal look more impressive), sweating, increased blood glucose ( hyperglycemia ), increased serum calcium, increase in white blood cells called neutrophilic leukocytes, alertness leading to sleep disturbance and "butterflies in the stomach" ( dyspepsia ). This primitive mechanism may help an organism survive by either running away or fighting the danger. With

1024-415: A comparably strong emotional response in both females and males, stress-induced sweat from females produced markedly stronger arousal in women than in men. Statistical tests pinpointed this gender-specificity to the right amygdala and strongest in the superficial nuclei. Since no significant differences were found in the olfactory bulb , the response to female fear-induced signals is likely based on processing

1152-418: A creature, species, or situations that should be avoided. SSDRs are an evolutionary adaptation that has been seen in many species throughout the world including rats, chimpanzees , prairie dogs , and even humans , an adaptation created to help individual creatures survive in a hostile world. Fear learning changes across the lifetime due to natural developmental changes in the brain. This includes changes in

1280-414: A culture to which they partially belong. As with any form of research dealing with human subjects, the researcher must ensure the ethical boundaries are never crossed by those conducting the subjects of study. The researcher must have clearly established boundaries before the onset of the study, and have guidelines in place should any issues cross the line of ethical behavior. One of the issues would be if

1408-657: A decline in concern for the perceived social threat is an indicative feature of the movements situated in Moral Panic. During the years 1919 to 1920, followed by the late 1940s to the 1950s, the United States had a moral panic over communism and feared being attacked by the Soviet Union . In the late 1940s and the 1950s, a period now known as the McCarthy Era , Senator Joseph McCarthy used his power as

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1536-400: A facade that is in accordance to what they believe the researcher is studying. This is why it is important to employ rigor in any qualitative research study. A useful method of rigor to employ is member-checking or triangulation . According to Richard Fenno , one problem in participant observation is the risk of "going native", by which he means that the researcher becomes so immersed in

1664-424: A fear-provoking situation. This suggests that fear can develop in both conditions, not just simply from personal history. Fear is affected by cultural and historical context. For example, in the early 20th century, many Americans feared polio , a disease that can lead to paralysis. There are consistent cross-cultural differences in how people respond to fear. Display rules affect how likely people are to express

1792-460: A genetic effect that is the result of natural selection . From an evolutionary psychology perspective, different fears may be different adaptations that have been useful in our evolutionary past. They may have developed during different time periods. Some fears, such as fear of heights, may be common to all mammals and developed during the mesozoic period. Other fears, such as fear of snakes, may be common to all simians and developed during

1920-524: A high testosterone level related to unhappiness in response to androstenone in men, and a high estradiol level related to disliking of androstenone in women. A German study from 2006 showed when anxiety-induced versus exercise-induced human sweat from a dozen people was pooled and offered to seven study participants, of five able to olfactorily distinguish exercise-induced sweat from room air, three could also distinguish exercise-induced sweat from anxiety induced sweat. The acoustic startle reflex response to

2048-404: A higher level of fear. Pathogens can suppress amygdala activity. Rats infected with the toxoplasmosis parasite become less fearful of cats, sometimes even seeking out their urine-marked areas. This behavior often leads to them being eaten by cats. The parasite then reproduces within the body of the cat. There is evidence that the parasite concentrates itself in the amygdala of infected rats. In

2176-408: A larger umbrella. While most notable in the United States, other countries such as Romania have seen exposure to or promotion of the idea as well. Blues was one of the first music genres to receive this label, mainly due to a perception that it incited violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to

2304-413: A longer period of time. A strength of observation and interaction over extended periods of time is that researchers can discover discrepancies between what participants say—and often believe—should happen (the formal system ) and what actually does happen, or between different aspects of the formal system; in contrast, a one-time survey of people's answers to a set of questions might be quite consistent, but

2432-613: A moral panic: Goode and Ben-Yehuda also examined three competing explanations of moral panics: Similarly, writing about the Blue Whale Challenge and the Momo Challenge as examples of moral panics, Benjamin Radford listed themes that he commonly observed in modern versions of these phenomena: In over 40 years of extensive study, researchers have identified several general clusters of topics that help describe

2560-415: A more carefully considered epistemology . The development of participant-observation as a research tool has therefore not been a haphazard process, but instead has involved a great deal of self-criticism and review. It has, as a result, become specialized. Visual anthropology can be viewed as a subset of methods of participant-observation, as the central questions in that field have to do with how to take

2688-399: A natural pheromone-containing solution, it has been shown that the impairment was associated with defective detection of related pheromones, and with changes in their inborn preference for pheromones related to sexual and reproductive activities. Lastly, alleviation of an acute fear response because a friendly peer (or in biological language: an affiliative conspecific ) tends and befriends

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2816-628: A new mass medium has entered the social scene, it has spurred public debates on social and cultural norms, debates that serve to reflect, negotiate and possibly revise these very norms.… In some cases, debate of a new medium brings about – indeed changes into – heated, emotional reactions … what may be defined as a media panic . Recent manifestations of this kind of development include cyberbullying and sexting . A central concern of modern mass media has been interpersonal crime. When new types or patterns of crime emerge, coverage expands considerably, especially when said crime involves increased violence or

2944-408: A part of the study and request that all data collected pertinent to them be removed. In this case, the researcher is obligated to relinquish data that may identify the members in any way. Above anything else, it is the researcher's responsibility that the participants of the study do not suffer any ill effects directly or indirectly from the study, participants are informed of their rights as subjects of

3072-411: A pattern of construction and reaction with greater foothold than mods and rockers – the moral panic. According to Cohen, there are five sequential stages in the construction of a moral panic: Cohen observed further: Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes

3200-478: A range of well-defined, though variable methods: informal interviews, direct observation , participation in the life of the group, collective discussions , analyses of personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis , results from activities undertaken off or online, and life-histories . Although the method is generally characterized as qualitative research , it can (and often does) include quantitative dimensions . Traditional participant observation

3328-542: A rat perceived alarm pheromones, it increased its defensive and risk assessment behavior, and its acoustic startle reflex was enhanced. It was not until 2011 that a link between severe pain, neuroinflammation and alarm pheromones release in rats was found: real time RT-PCR analysis of rat brain tissues indicated that shocking the footpad of a rat increased its production of proinflammatory cytokines in deep brain structures, namely of IL-1β , heteronuclear Corticotropin-releasing hormone and c-fos mRNA expressions in both

3456-403: A response to the stimulus in the form of fear or aggression commences, the amygdalae may elicit the release of hormones into the body to put the person into a state of alertness, in which they are ready to move, run, fight, etc. This defensive response is generally referred to in physiology as the fight-or-flight response regulated by the hypothalamus, part of the limbic system . Once the person

3584-414: A result of learning. This has been studied in psychology as fear conditioning , beginning with John B. Watson's Little Albert experiment in 1920, which was inspired after observing a child with an irrational fear of dogs. In this study, an 11-month-old boy was conditioned to fear a white rat in the laboratory. The fear became generalized to include other white, furry objects, such as a rabbit, dog, and even

3712-641: A senator to conduct a witch hunt for communists he claimed had infiltrated all levels of American society, including Hollywood, the State Department , and the armed forces. When he began, he held little influence or respect within the Senate, but he exploited Americans' fears of communism (and Congress' desire to not lose re-election) to rise to prominence and keep the hunt going in spite of an increasingly apparent lack of evidence, often accusing those who dared oppose him of being communists themselves. Over

3840-476: A separate experiment, rats with lesions in the amygdala did not express fear or anxiety towards unwanted stimuli. These rats pulled on levers supplying food that sometimes sent out electrical shocks. While they learned to avoid pressing on them, they did not distance themselves from these shock-inducing levers. Several brain structures other than the amygdalae have also been observed to be activated when individuals are presented with fearful vs. neutral faces, namely

3968-435: A sound when sensing anxiety sweat was larger than when sensing exercise-induced sweat, as measured by electromyography analysis of the orbital muscle, which is responsible for the eyeblink component. This showed for the first time that fear chemosignals can modulate the startle reflex in humans without emotional mediation; fear chemosignals primed the recipient's "defensive behavior" prior to the subjects' conscious attention on

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4096-552: A source of feedback or even stimulus change. Intrinsic feedback or information coming from within, muscle twitches, increased heart rate, are seen to be more important in SSDRs than extrinsic feedback, stimuli that comes from the external environment. Dr. Bolles found that most creatures have some intrinsic set of fears, to help assure survival of the species. Rats will run away from any shocking event, and pigeons will flap their wings harder when threatened. The wing flapping in pigeons and

4224-494: A term coined in analogy to keystone species . Pheromones may determine species compositions and affect rates of energy and material exchange in an ecological community . Thus pheromones generate structure in a food web and play critical roles in maintaining natural systems . Evidence of chemosensory alarm signals in humans has emerged slowly: Although alarm pheromones have not been physically isolated and their chemical structures have not been identified in humans so far, there

4352-542: A variety of translational animal models. These models are particularly important for research that would be too invasive for human studies. Rodents such as mice and rats are common animal models, but other species are used. Certain aspects of fear research still requires more research such as sex, gender, and age differences. Participant observation Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography . This type of methodology

4480-649: Is a form of cross-checking information. Member checking is when the researcher asks for participant feedback on his or her recorded observations to ensure that the researcher is accurately depicting the participants' experiences and the accuracy of conclusions drawn from the data. This method can be used in participant observation studies or when conducting interviews. Member-checking and triangulation are good methods to use when conducting participant observations, or any other form of qualitative research, because they increase data and research conclusion credibility and transferability. In quantitative research, credibility

4608-401: Is called " social buffering ". The term is in analogy to the 1985 "buffering" hypothesis in psychology, where social support has been proven to mitigate the negative health effects of alarm pheromone mediated distress. The role of a "social pheromone" is suggested by the recent discovery that olfactory signals are responsible in mediating the "social buffering" in male rats. "Social buffering"

4736-469: Is closer to a psychological illness rather than a sociological phenomenon. Though the term moral panic was used in 1830 by a religious magazine regarding a sermon, it was used in a way that completely differs from its modern social science application. The phrase was used again in 1831, with an intent that is possibly closer to its modern use. Though not using the term moral panic , Marshall McLuhan , in his 1964 book Understanding Media , articulated

4864-557: Is decide what kind of participant observer he or she will be. Spradley (1980) provides five different types of participant observations summarised below. Limitations To Any Participant Observation The presence of the researcher in the field may influence the participants' behavior, causing the participants to behave differently than they would without the presence of the observer (see: observer-expectancy effect ). Researchers engaging in this type of qualitative research method must be aware that participants may act differently or put up

4992-478: Is determined by the level of fear as well as the specific context, such as environmental characteristics (escape route present, distance to refuge), the presence of a discrete and localized threat, the distance between threat and subject, threat characteristics (speed, size, directness of approach), the characteristics of the subject under threat (size, physical condition, speed, degree of crypsis , protective morphological structures), social conditions (group size), and

5120-594: Is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (including cultural anthropology and ethnology ), sociology (including sociology of culture and cultural criminology ), communication studies , human geography , and social psychology . Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals (such as a religious, occupational, youth group, or a particular community) and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. The concept "participant observation"

5248-532: Is especially successful in the study of sub-cultures or groups sharing a strong sense of identity, where only by taking part may the observer truly get access to the lives of those being studied. The postmortem publication of Grenville Goodwin 's decade of work as a participant-observer with the Western Apache established him as a prominent figure in the field of ethnology . Since the 1980s, some anthropologists and other social scientists have questioned

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5376-428: Is evidence for their presence. Androstadienone , for example, a steroidal, endogenous odorant, is a pheromone candidate found in human sweat, axillary hair and plasma. The closely related compound androstenone is involved in communicating dominance, aggression or competition; sex hormone influences on androstenone perception in humans showed a high testosterone level related to heightened androstenone sensitivity in men,

5504-432: Is how animals survive in the wild. Humans and animals both share these species-specific defense reactions, such as the flight-or-fight, which also include pseudo-aggression, fake or intimidating aggression and freeze response to threats, which is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system . These SSDRs are learned very quickly through social interactions between others of the same species, other species, and interaction with

5632-524: Is in safe mode, meaning that there are no longer any potential threats surrounding them, the amygdalae will send this information to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) where it is stored for similar future situations, which is known as memory consolidation . Some of the hormones involved during the state of fight-or-flight include epinephrine , which regulates heart rate and metabolism as well as dilating blood vessels and air passages, norepinephrine increasing heart rate, blood flow to skeletal muscles and

5760-420: Is increased, which activates processes with the expected consequence of increasing consistency and decreasing arousal." In this context, it has been proposed that fear behavior is caused by an inconsistency between a preferred, or expected, situation and the actually perceived situation, and functions to remove the inconsistent stimulus from the perceptual field, for instance by fleeing or hiding, thereby resolving

5888-450: Is less likely to show conflicts between different aspects of the social system or between conscious representations and behavior. In participant observation, a researcher's discipline based interests and commitments shape which events he or she considers are important and relevant to the research inquiry. According to Howell (1972), the four stages that most participant observation research studies are establishing rapport or getting to know

6016-743: Is liken to internal validity, or the knowledge that our findings are representative of reality, and transferability is similar to external validity or the extent to which the findings can be generalized across different populations, methods, and settings. A variant of participant observation is observing participation , described by Marek M. Kaminski , who explored prison subculture as a political prisoner in communist Poland in 1985. "Observing" or "observant" participation has also been used to describe fieldwork in sexual minority subcultures by anthropologists and sociologists who are themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, as well as amongst political activists and in protest events. The different phrasing

6144-406: Is meant to highlight the way in which their partial or full membership in the community/subculture that they are researching both allows a different sort of access to the community and also shapes their perceptions in ways different from a full outsider. This is similar to considerations by anthropologists such as Lila Abu-Lughod on "halfie anthropology", or fieldwork by bicultural anthropologists on

6272-774: Is modulated by the process of cognition and learning. Thus, fear is judged as rational and appropriate, or irrational and inappropriate (or unconscious). An irrational fear is called a phobia . Fear is closely related to the emotion anxiety , which occurs as the result of often future threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable. The fear response serves survival by engendering appropriate behavioral responses, so it has been preserved throughout evolution . Sociological and organizational research also suggests that individuals' fears are not solely dependent on their nature but are also shaped by their social relations and culture, which guide their understanding of when and how much fear to feel. Many physiological changes in

6400-451: Is not something to be thwarted but allowed in a parent's presence if required. Developing a sense of equanimity to handle various situations is often advocated as an antidote to irrational fear and as an essential skill by a number of ancient philosophies. Fear of the unknown (FOTU) "may be a, or possibly the, fundamental fear" from early times when there were many threats to life. Although fear behavior varies from species to species, it

6528-522: Is often academically considered irrational (see Cohen's model of moral panic, below). Examples of moral panic include the belief in widespread abduction of children by predatory pedophiles and belief in ritual abuse of women and children by Satanic cults . Some moral panics can become embedded in standard political discourse , which include concepts such as the MeToo movement , Red Scare , racism , and terrorism . It differs from mass hysteria , which

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6656-489: Is often divided into two main categories; namely, avoidance/flight and immobility. To these, different researchers have added different categories, such as threat display and attack, protective responses (including startle and looming responses), defensive burying, and social responses (including alarm vocalizations and submission). Finally, immobility is often divided into freezing and tonic immobility . The decision as to which particular fear behavior to perform

6784-522: Is to defend themselves and at the same time to inform members of the same species of danger and leads to observable behavior change like freezing, defensive behavior, or dispersion depending on circumstances and species. For example, stressed rats release odorant cues that cause other rats to move away from the source of the signal. After the discovery of pheromones in 1959, alarm pheromones were first described in 1968 in ants and earthworms, and four years later also found in mammals, both mice and rats. Over

6912-441: Is usually undertaken over an extended period of time, ranging from several months to many years, and even generations. An extended research time period means that the researcher is able to obtain more detailed and accurate information about the individuals, community, and/or population under study. Observable details (like daily time allotment) and more hidden details (like taboo behavior) are more easily observed and interpreted over

7040-525: The Chicago school of sociology . Participant observation was used extensively by Frank Hamilton Cushing in his study of the Zuni people in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This would be followed in the early twentieth century by studies of non-Western societies through such people as Bronisław Malinowski (1929), E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1940), and Margaret Mead (1928). The practice emerged as

7168-459: The amygdala ), it was proposed that a person learns to fear regardless of whether they themselves have experienced trauma, or if they have observed the fear in others. In a study completed by Andreas Olsson, Katherine I. Nearing and Elizabeth A. Phelps, the amygdala were affected both when subjects observed someone else being submitted to an aversive event, knowing that the same treatment awaited themselves, and when subjects were subsequently placed in

7296-417: The cenozoic time period (the still-ongoing geological era encompassing the last 66 million of history). Still others, such as fear of mice and insects, may be unique to humans and developed during the paleolithic and neolithic time periods (when mice and insects become important carriers of infectious diseases and harmful for crops and stored foods). Nonhuman animals and humans innovate specific fears as

7424-407: The paraventricular nucleus and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis , and it increased stress hormone levels in plasma ( corticosterone ). The neurocircuit for how rats perceive alarm pheromones was shown to be related to the hypothalamus , brainstem , and amygdalae , all of which are evolutionary ancient structures deep inside or in the case of the brainstem underneath the brain away from

7552-615: The prefrontal cortex and the amygdala . The visual exploration of an emotional face does not follow a fixed pattern but modulated by the emotional content of the face. Scheller et al. found that participants paid more attention to the eyes when recognising fearful or neutral faces, while the mouth was fixated on when happy faces are presented, irrespective of task demands and spatial locations of face stimuli. These findings were replicated when fearful eyes are presented and when canonical face configurations are distorted for fearful, neutral and happy expressions. The brain structures that are

7680-487: The restrictive laws around them worldwide date back to this period. In early 1960s Britain, the two main youth subcultures were Mods and Rockers . The "Mods and Rockers" conflict was explored as an instance of moral panic by sociologist Stanley Cohen in his seminal study Folk Devils and Moral Panics , which examined media coverage of the Mod and Rocker riots in the 1960s. Fear In humans and other animals, fear

7808-427: The " mod " and " rocker " youth subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s. Cohen's initial development of the concept was for the purpose of analyzing the definition of and social reaction to these subcultures as a social problem . According to Cohen, a moral panic occurs when a "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." To Cohen, those who start

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7936-402: The "recipient" rat (the rat perceiving the pheromone) depending which body region they were released from: Pheromone production from the face modified behavior in the recipient rat, e.g. caused sniffing or movement, whereas pheromone secreted from the rat's anal area induced autonomic nervous system stress responses, like an increase in core body temperature. Further experiments showed that when

8064-447: The "unknown". The irrational fear can branch out to many areas such as the hereafter, the next ten years or even tomorrow. Chronic irrational fear has deleterious effects since the elicitor stimulus is commonly absent or perceived from delusions. Such fear can create comorbidity with the anxiety disorder umbrella. Being scared may cause people to experience anticipatory fear of what may lie ahead rather than planning and evaluating for

8192-588: The 1840s, particularly as it related to religion, politics, and jobs. Nativist criticism of immigrants from Catholic nations centered upon the control of the Pope over church members. The concern regarding the social threat led the Know-Nothing Party in the 1856 presidential election to win 21.5% of the vote. The quick decline in political success for the Know Nothing-Party as a result of

8320-802: The Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978), Marxist Stuart Hall and his colleagues studied the public reaction to the phenomenon of mugging and the perception that it had recently been imported from American culture into the UK. Employing Cohen's definition of moral panic , Hall and colleagues theorized that the "rising crime rate equation" performs an ideological function relating to social control . Crime statistics , in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes; moral panics could thereby be ignited to create public support for

8448-610: The Innocent that they predisposed children to violence. Comic books appeared in congressional hearings, and organisations promoted book burnings . Wertham's work resulted in the creation of the Comics Code , which drastically limited what kind of content could be published. As a result of these limitations, many comics publishers and illustrators were forced to leave the profession, and the content produced by those that remained became tamer and more focused on superheroes . During

8576-539: The Streets (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Delinquents , High School Confidential (1958), and the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story . Fixation on the switchblade as the symbol of youth violence, sex, and delinquency resulted in demands from the public and Congress to control the sale and possession of such knives. State laws restricting or criminalizing switchblade possession and use were adopted by an increasing number of state legislatures, and many of

8704-608: The acoustic startle reflex level. In analogy to the social buffering of rats and honeybees in response to chemosignals, induction of empathy by "smelling anxiety" of another person has been found in humans. A study from 2013 provided brain imaging evidence that human responses to fear chemosignals may be gender-specific . Researchers collected alarm-induced sweat and exercise-induced sweat from donors extracted it, pooled it and presented it to 16 unrelated people undergoing functional brain MRI . While stress-induced sweat from males produced

8832-446: The alarm pheromone, and their preference/avoidance for odors from cylinders containing the pheromone, showed that the pheromone had very low volatility . In 1993 a connection between alarm chemosignals in mice and their immune response was found. Pheromone production in mice was found to be associated with or mediated by the pituitary gland in 1994. In 2004, it was demonstrated that rats' alarm pheromones had different effects on

8960-447: The amount of experience with the type of the threat. Often laboratory studies with rats are conducted to examine the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear responses. In 2004, researchers conditioned rats ( Rattus norvegicus ) to fear a certain stimulus, through electric shock. The researchers were able to then cause an extinction of this conditioned fear, to a point that no medications or drugs were able to further aid in

9088-487: The amygdala are generated by activation of the neurons in the region. Experimental data supports the notion that synaptic plasticity of the neurons leading to the lateral amygdalae occurs with fear conditioning. In some cases, this forms permanent fear responses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a phobia . MRI and fMRI scans have shown that the amygdalae in individuals diagnosed with such disorders including bipolar or panic disorder are larger and wired for

9216-485: The blues during the 1920s. Jazz was another early receiver of the label. At the time, traditionalists considered jazz to contribute to the breakdown of morality. Despite the veiled attacks on blues and jazz as "negro music" often going hand-in-hand with other attacks on the genres, urban middle-class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's music", and agreed with the beliefs that jazz's improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting promiscuity. Some have speculated that

9344-457: The body are associated with fear, summarized as the fight-or-flight response . An innate response for coping with danger, it works by accelerating the breathing rate ( hyperventilation ), heart rate, vasoconstriction of the peripheral blood vessels leading to blood pooling, dilating the pupils, increasing muscle tension including the muscles attached to each hair follicle to contract and causing "goosebumps", or more clinically, piloerection (making

9472-520: The brain, there are various regions of the brain involved in deciphering fear in humans and other nonhuman species. The amygdala communicates both directions between the prefrontal cortex , hypothalamus , the sensory cortex , the hippocampus , thalamus , septum , and the brainstem . The amygdala plays an important role in SSDR, such as the ventral amygdalofugal, which is essential for associative learning , and SSDRs are learned through interaction with

9600-414: The capacity to fear is part of human nature . Many studies have found that certain fears (e.g. animals, heights) are much more common than others (e.g. flowers, clouds). These fears are also easier to induce in the laboratory. This phenomenon is known as preparedness . Because early humans that were quick to fear dangerous situations were more likely to survive and reproduce; preparedness is theorized to be

9728-418: The center of most neurobiological events associated with fear are the two amygdalae , located behind the pituitary gland. Each amygdala is part of a circuitry of fear learning. They are essential for proper adaptation to stress and specific modulation of emotional learning memory. In the presence of a threatening stimulus, the amygdalae generate the secretion of hormones that influence fear and aggression. Once

9856-463: The central core values of consensual society and as posing a threat to both the values of society and society itself, hence the term " folk devils ". Setting out to test his hypotheses on mods and rockers, Cohen ended up in a rather different place: he discovered a pattern of construction and reaction with greater foothold than mods and rockers – the moral panic. He thereby identified five sequential stages of moral panic. Characterizing

9984-455: The community. Stanley Cohen , who developed the term, states that moral panic happens when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests". While the issues identified may be real, the claims "exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality and/or inevitability of harm". Moral panics are now studied in sociology and criminology , media studies , and cultural studies . It

10112-536: The concept academically in describing the effects of media. As a social theory or sociological concept , the concept was first developed in the United Kingdom by Stanley Cohen , who introduced the phrase moral panic in a 1967–1969 PhD thesis that became the basis for his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics . In the book, Cohen describes the reaction among the British public to the rivalry between

10240-417: The concept was for the purpose of analyzing the definition of and social reaction to these subcultures as a social problem . He was interested in demonstrating how agents of social control amplified deviance , in that they potentially damaged the identities of those labeled as "deviant" and invited them to embrace deviant identities and behavior. According to Cohen, these groups were labelled as being outside

10368-449: The cortex, and involved in the fight-or-flight response , as is the case in humans. Alarm pheromone-induced anxiety in rats has been used to evaluate the degree to which anxiolytics can alleviate anxiety in humans. For this, the change in the acoustic startle reflex of rats with alarm pheromone-induced anxiety (i.e. reduction of defensiveness) has been measured. Pretreatment of rats with one of five anxiolytics used in clinical medicine

10496-497: The culture of social control , and the public . The concept of "moral panic" has also been linked to certain assumptions about the mass media . In recent times, the mass media have become important players in the dissemination of moral indignation, even when they do not appear to be consciously engaged in sensationalism or in muckraking . Simply reporting a subset of factual statements without contextual nuance can be enough to generate concern, anxiety, or panic. Cohen stated that

10624-589: The degree to which participant observation can give veridical insight into the minds of other people. At the same time, a more formalized qualitative research program known as grounded theory , initiated by Glaser and Strauss (1967), began gaining currency within American sociology and related fields such as public health. In response to these challenges, some ethnographers have refined their methods, either making them more amenable to formal hypothesis-testing and replicability or framing their interpretations within

10752-559: The development of the olfactory bulb and odor discrimination and it is highly expressed in developing rat brains, but absent in most regions of adult rat brains. Conditional deletion of the MAPK7gene in mouse neural stem cells impairs several pheromone-mediated behaviors, including aggression and mating in male mice. These behavior impairments were not caused by a reduction in the level of testosterone, by physical immobility, by heightened fear or anxiety or by depression. Using mouse urine as

10880-503: The differences between definitions of a moral panic as described by American versus British sociologists. Kenneth Thompson claimed that American sociologists tended to emphasize psychological factors, while the British portrayed "moral panics" as crises of capitalism . British criminologist Jock Young used the term in his participant observation study of drug consumption in Porthmadog , Wales, between 1967 and 1969. In Policing

11008-454: The environment and others of the same species. An emotional response is created only after the signals have been relayed between the different regions of the brain, and activating the sympathetic nervous systems; which controls the flight, fight, freeze, fright, and faint response . Often a damaged amygdala can cause impairment in the recognition of fear (like the human case of patient S.M. ). This impairment can cause different species to lack

11136-416: The environment. These acquired sets of reactions or responses are not easily forgotten. The animal that survives is the animal that already knows what to fear and how to avoid this threat. An example in humans is the reaction to the sight of a snake, many jump backwards before cognitively realizing what they are jumping away from, and in some cases, it is a stick rather than a snake. As with many functions of

11264-442: The extinction process. The rats showed signs of avoidance learning, not fear, but simply avoiding the area that brought pain to the test rats. The avoidance learning of rats is seen as a conditioned response , and therefore the behavior can be unconditioned, as supported by the earlier research. Species-specific defense reactions (SSDRs) or avoidance learning in nature is the specific tendency to avoid certain threats or stimuli, it

11392-559: The facial expression of fear and other emotions. Fear of victimization is a function of perceived risk and seriousness of potential harm. According to surveys, some of the most common fears are of demons and ghosts , the existence of evil powers, cockroaches , spiders , snakes , heights , water , enclosed spaces , tunnels , bridges , needles , social rejection , failure , examinations , and public speaking . Regionally some may more so fear terrorist attacks , death , war , criminal or gang violence , being alone ,

11520-511: The following decades, the Comics Code was loosened in scope before finally being abolished in 2011. In the United States, a 1950 article titled "The Toy That Kills" in the Women's Home Companion , about automatic knives, or " switchblades ", sparked significant controversy. It was further fuelled by highly popular films of the late 1950s, including Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Crime in

11648-453: The future, nuclear war , flying , clowns , intimacy , people , and driving . Fear of the unknown or irrational fear is caused by negative thinking ( worry ) which arises from anxiety accompanied by a subjective sense of apprehension or dread. Irrational fear shares a common neural pathway with other fears, a pathway that engages the nervous system to mobilize bodily resources in the face of danger or threat. Many people are scared of

11776-448: The gene stathmin show no avoidance learning, or a lack of fear, and will often walk directly up to cats and be eaten. Animals use these SSDRs to continue living, to help increase their chance of fitness , by surviving long enough to procreate. Humans and animals alike have created fear to know what should be avoided, and this fear can be learned through association with others in the community, or learned through personal experience with

11904-434: The inconsistency. This approach puts fear in a broader perspective, also involving aggression and curiosity . When the inconsistency between perception and expectancy is small, learning as a result of curiosity reduces inconsistency by updating expectancy to match perception. If the inconsistency is larger, fear or aggressive behavior may be employed to alter the perception in order to make it match expectancy, depending on

12032-570: The mainstream culture; putting strain on welfare , education , and housing systems; and excessive involvement in crime. The advent of any new medium of communication produces anxieties among those who deem themselves as protectors of childhood and culture. Their fears are often based on a lack of knowledge as to the actual capacities or usage of the medium. Moralizing organizations, such as those motivated by religion, commonly advocate censorship , while parents remain concerned. According to media studies professor Kirsten Drotner: [E]very time

12160-562: The mass media is the primary source of the public's knowledge about deviance and social problems. He further argued that moral panic gives rise to the folk devil by labelling actions and people. Christian Joppke , furthers the importance of media as he notes, shifts in public attention "can trigger the decline of movements and fuel the rise of others." According to Cohen, the media appear in any or all three roles in moral panic dramas: In their 1994 book Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance , Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda take

12288-477: The meaning, i.e. on the emotional level, rather than the strength of chemosensory cues from each gender, i.e. the perceptual level. An approach-avoidance task was set up where volunteers seeing either an angry or a happy cartoon face on a computer screen pushed away or pulled toward them a joystick as fast as possible. Volunteers smelling androstadienone, masked with clove oil scent responded faster, especially to angry faces than those smelling clove oil only, which

12416-516: The method, Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando , said that: "The first way to get to know the Indians is to become like one of them; and it is by learning their language that we will become their fellow citizens." Later, the method would be popularized by Bronisław Malinowski and his students in Britain; the students of Franz Boas in the United States; and, in the later urban research, the students of

12544-457: The natural world. He theorized the species-specific defense reaction (SSDR). There are three forms of SSDRs: flight, fight (pseudo-aggression), or freeze. Even domesticated animals have SSDRs, and in those moments it is seen that animals revert to atavistic standards and become "wild" again. Dr. Bolles states that responses are often dependent on the reinforcement of a safety signal, and not the aversive conditioned stimuli. This safety signal can be

12672-436: The need to "police the crisis". First to name the phenomenon, Stanley Cohen investigated a series of "moral panics" in his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics . In the book, Cohen describes the reaction among the British public to the seaside rivalry between the " mod " and " rocker " youth subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s. In a moral panic, Cohen says, "the untypical is made typical". Cohen's initial development of

12800-530: The next two decades, identification and characterization of these pheromones proceeded in all manner of insects and sea animals, including fish, but it was not until 1990 that more insight into mammalian alarm pheromones was gleaned. In 1985, a link between odors released by stressed rats and pain perception was discovered: unstressed rats exposed to these odors developed opioid-mediated analgesia. In 1997, researchers found that bees became less responsive to pain after they had been stimulated with isoamyl acetate ,

12928-545: The occipito cerebellar regions including the fusiform gyrus and the inferior parietal / superior temporal gyri. Fearful eyes, brows and mouth seem to separately reproduce these brain responses. Scientists from Zurich studies show that the hormone oxytocin related to stress and sex reduces activity in your brain fear center. In threatening situations, insects, aquatic organisms, birds, reptiles, and mammals emit odorant substances, initially called alarm substances, which are chemical signals now called alarm pheromones . This

13056-400: The panic after fearing a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are ' moral entrepreneurs ', while those who supposedly threaten social order have been described as ' folk devils '. In the early 1990s, Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda produced an " attributional " model that placed more emphasis on strict definition than cultural processes. Many sociologists have pointed out

13184-413: The panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folk-lore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself. Characterizing the reactions to the mod and rocker conflict, Cohen identified four key agents in moral panics: mass media , moral entrepreneurs ,

13312-455: The people, immersing oneself in the field, recording data and observations, and consolidating the information gathered. The phases are as follows: Participant observation is not simply showing up at a site and writing things down. On the contrary, participant observation is a complex method that has many components. One of the first things that a researcher or individual must do after deciding to conduct participant observations to gather data

13440-475: The person of leadership, or not inform anyone of one's true purpose in fear of influencing the attitudes of members, thus skewing the observations recorded. The decision is based on the nature of the study and the researcher's own personal thoughts on the cost-benefit ratio of the situation. Participant observation also brings up the issue of voluntary participation in events the researcher observes and records. There may be instances when members do not want to be

13568-400: The priesthood and among celebrities has somewhat altered the original notion of pedophiles being complete strangers , their presence in and around the family is hardly acknowledged. Substances used for pleasure such as alcohol and other drugs are popularly subject to legal action and criminalization due to their alleged harms to the health of those who partake in them or general order on

13696-537: The principal approach to ethnographic research by anthropologists and relied on the cultivation of personal relationships with local informants as a way of learning about a culture, involving both observing and participating in the social life of a group. By living with the cultures they studied, researchers were able to formulate first-hand accounts of their lives and gain novel insights. This same method of study has also been applied to groups within Western society and

13824-497: The reactions to the mod and rocker conflict, he identified four key agents in moral panics: mass media , moral entrepreneurs , the culture of social control , and the public . In a more recent edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics , Cohen suggested that the term "panic" in itself connotes irrationality and a lack of control. Cohen maintained that "panic" is a suitable term when used as an extended metaphor. Setting out to test his hypotheses on mods and rockers, Cohen discovered

13952-442: The release of glucose from energy stores, and cortisol which increases blood sugar, increases circulating neutrophilic leukocytes, calcium amongst other things. After a situation which incites fear occurs, the amygdalae and hippocampus record the event through synaptic plasticity . The stimulation to the hippocampus will cause the individual to remember many details surrounding the situation. Plasticity and memory formation in

14080-409: The researcher is studying a population where illegal activities may occur or when working with minors (children). In participant observation, the ethical concern that is most salient is that of informed consent and voluntary participation. There is the issue of deciding to obtain informed consent from every individual in the group of study, obtain the informed consent for participant observation from

14208-455: The rock phase of the panic in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to the popularity of the satanic ritual abuse alleged moral panic in the 1980s. In the United States, substantial limits were placed on comic book content during the 1950s, especially in the horror and crime genres. This moral panic was promoted by the psychologist Fredric Wertham , who claimed that comics were a major source of juvenile delinquency, arguing in his book Seduction of

14336-572: The same. For example, "continuation of scholarly education" is perceived by many educators as a risk that may cause them fear and stress, and they would rather teach things they've been taught than go and do research. The ambiguity of situations that tend to be uncertain and unpredictable can cause anxiety in addition to other psychological and physical problems in some populations; especially those who engage it constantly, for example, in war-ridden places or in places of conflict, terrorism, abuse, etc. Poor parenting that instills fear can also debilitate

14464-645: The scattered running of rats are considered species-specific defense reactions or behaviors. Bolles believed that SSDRs are conditioned through Pavlovian conditioning, and not operant conditioning; SSDRs arise from the association between the environmental stimuli and adverse events. Michael S. Fanselow conducted an experiment, to test some specific defense reactions, he observed that rats in two different shock situations responded differently, based on instinct or defensive topography, rather than contextual information. Species-specific defense responses are created out of fear, and are essential for survival. Rats that lack

14592-417: The sensation of fear, and often can become overly confident, confronting larger peers, or walking up to predatory creatures. Robert C. Bolles (1970), a researcher at University of Washington, wanted to understand species-specific defense reactions and avoidance learning among animals, but found that the theories of avoidance learning and the tools that were used to measure this tendency were out of touch with

14720-470: The series of physiological changes, the consciousness realizes an emotion of fear. There are observable physical reactions in individuals who experience fear. An individual might experience a feeling of dizziness, lightheaded, like they are being choked, sweating, shortness of breath, vomiting or nausea, numbness or shaking and any other like symptoms. These bodily reactions informs the individual that they are afraid and should proceed to remove or get away from

14848-435: The size of the inconsistency as well as the specific context. Aggressive behavior is assumed to alter perception by forcefully manipulating it into matching the expected situation, while in some cases thwarted escape may also trigger aggressive behavior in an attempt to remove the thwarting stimulus. In order to improve our understanding of the neural and behavioral mechanisms of adaptive and maladaptive fear, investigators use

14976-586: The stimulus that is causing that fear. An influential categorization of stimuli causing fear was proposed by psychologist Jeffrey Alan Gray ; namely, intensity , novelty , special evolutionary dangers, stimuli arising during social interaction, and conditioned stimuli. Another categorization was proposed by Archer, who, besides conditioned fear stimuli, categorized fear-evoking (as well as aggression -evoking) stimuli into three groups; namely, pain , novelty, and frustration , although he also described " looming ", which refers to an object rapidly moving towards

15104-405: The streets. Recent examples include methamphetamine , mephedrone , and designer drugs . A series of moral panic is likely to recur whenever humans migrate to a foreign location to live alongside the native or indigenous population, particularly if the newcomers are of a different skin color or religion . These immigrants may be accused of: bringing alien cultures and refusing to integrate with

15232-569: The use of weapons. Sustaining the idea that crime is out of control, this keeps prevalent the fear of being randomly attacked on the street by violent young men. Researchers have considered a number of historical and current events to meet the criteria set out by Stanley Cohen. The brief success of the Know-Nothing Party in the US during the 1850s can be understood as resulting from a moral panic over Irish Catholic immigration dating back to

15360-831: The visual sensors of a subject, and can be categorized as "intensity". Russell described a more functional categorization of fear-evoking stimuli, in which for instance novelty is a variable affecting more than one category: 1) Predator stimuli (including movement, suddenness, proximity, but also learned and innate predator stimuli); 2) Physical environmental dangers (including intensity and heights); 3) Stimuli associated with increased risk of predation and other dangers (including novelty, openness, illumination, and being alone); 4) Stimuli stemming from conspecifics (including novelty, movement, and spacing behavior); 5) Species-predictable fear stimuli and experience (special evolutionary dangers); and 6) Fear stimuli that are not species predictable (conditioned fear stimuli). Although many fears are learned,

15488-431: The way in which moral panics operate and the impact they have. Some of the more common clusters identified are: child abuse , drugs and alcohol, immigration , media technologies, and street crime . Exceptional cases of physical or sexual abuse against children have driven policies based on child protection , regardless of their frequency or contradicting evidence from experts. While discoveries about pedophilia in

15616-418: The way of observing and recording meaningful experiences. As the name suggests, investigator triangulation involves multiple research team members gathering data about the same event, but this method ensures a variety of recorded observations due to the varying theoretical perspectives of each research team member. In other words, triangulation , be it data, investigator, theory or methodological triangulation,

15744-419: The world of the participant that the researcher loses scholarly objectivity. Fenno also warns that the researcher may lose the ability and willingness to criticize the participant in order to maintain ties with the participant. While gathering data through participant observation, investigator triangulation would be a way to ensure that one researcher is not letting his or her biases or personal preferences in

15872-443: The years, there has been concern of various types of new music causing spiritual or otherwise moral corruption to younger generations, often called "the devil's music". While the types of music popularly labeled as such has changed with time, along with the intended meaning of the term, this basic factor of the moral panic has remained constant. It could thus be argued that this is really a series of smaller moral panics that fall under

16000-532: Was able to reduce their anxiety: namely midazolam , phenelzine (a nonselective monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor), propranolol , a nonselective beta blocker , clonidine , an alpha 2 adrenergic agonist or CP-154,526 , a corticotropin-releasing hormone antagonist . Faulty development of odor discrimination impairs the perception of pheromones and pheromone-related behavior, like aggressive behavior and mating in male rats: The enzyme Mitogen-activated protein kinase 7 (MAPK7) has been implicated in regulating

16128-508: Was also observed to mitigate the conditioned fear responses of honeybees. A bee colony exposed to an environment of high threat of predation did not show increased aggression and aggressive-like gene expression patterns in individual bees, but decreased aggression. That the bees did not simply habituate to threats is suggested by the fact that the disturbed colonies also decreased their foraging. Biologists have proposed in 2012 that fear pheromones evolved as molecules of "keystone significance",

16256-495: Was first coined in 1924 by Eduard C. Lindeman (1885-1953), an American pioneer in adult education influenced by John Dewey and Danish educator-philosopher N.F.S.Grundtvig , in his 1925 book Social Discovery: An Approach to the Study of Functional Groups . The method, however, originated earlier and was applied in the field research linked to European and American voyages of scientific exploration . In 1800 one of precursors of

16384-434: Was interpreted as androstadienone-related activation of the fear system. A potential mechanism of action is, that androstadienone alters the "emotional face processing". Androstadienone is known to influence the activity of the fusiform gyrus which is relevant for face recognition . Cognitive-consistency theories assume that "when two or more simultaneously active cognitive structures are logically inconsistent, arousal

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