It's a wide, dangerous, gun-filled forest out there, and you'd be some kind of irresponsible monster to send your child out into it without first outfitting him or her in a found-pound kevlar-threaded vest, undershirt, and backpack, which can be used both as a carry case for social studies books AND as a ballistics… » 1/17/13 12:55pm 1/17/13 12:55pm

The inquisitive minds of the scientific community who most appreciated the dimmed lights and hushed lecture rooms of their early morning undergrad art history lectures might have figured out what makes people get into abstract art — pure, unadulterated terror. » 9/13/12 12:40pm 9/13/12 12:40pm

No matter how you slice it, childbirth is scary. You're trying to squeeze a pretty large baby head (and shoulders and the rest) through a pretty narrow channel (vagina!), and yes, in theory, your body is designed to do this and it will work—but what if it doesn't? We all know that practically every woman in labor is… » 6/27/12 10:00am 6/27/12 10:00am

If you're having trouble sleeping, you might not have some complex mental problem; you might just have a good old-fashioned fear of things that go bump in the night. At least that's what a new study has found. Researchers studied a group of college in Toronto and found that almost half of them who said they slept… » 6/11/12 11:55pm 6/11/12 11:55pm

Spiders are creepy! I mean, they are kind of neat, but mostly they cause people to scurry away in fear and sometimes even emit high-pitched shrieks. Well, if you are one of the people who can't stand those little multi-legged crawlers, you might be in luck. A new study has found that it is possible to turn people from… » 5/21/12 9:15pm 5/21/12 9:15pm

Because they feed on it! Just kidding — actually, fear just makes spiders look bigger, as scientists determined when they had a bunch of volunteers hang out with tarantulas and then guess their size. People who were afraid of spiders estimated them as bigger than did those who were just fine with the eight-legged… » 2/23/12 4:15pm 2/23/12 4:15pm

Got a lot of friends? Thank your amygdala! A new study may shed light on how this brain structure, often associated with fear, may regulate our social lives as well. » 12/28/10 2:17pm 12/28/10 2:17pm

A woman, whom the medical journal Current Biology simply calls SM, has a rare from of brain damage, and literally can not feel fear. But researchers sure had a good time trying to scare her! » 12/20/10 2:17pm 12/20/10 2:17pm

The message I got from sex ed was this: sex will kill you. Turns out I wasn't alone. And such scare tactics may not be effective. » 12/01/10 6:03pm 12/01/10 6:03pm

"My own mother didn't foster an upbringing that made women seem like loving people," says a man writing to advice columnist Cary Tennis. What follows brings up a whole host of difficult issues. » 11/02/10 3:42pm 11/02/10 3:42pm

Halloween is a time to embrace the spooky, the creepy, the frightening that Hollywood's most twisted minds have to offer. But what if you, like me, are a big fucking wimp about all things horror? » 10/30/10 5:50pm 10/30/10 5:50pm

According to a new study, women are faster and better than men at distinguishing between fear and disgust, especially in other women. This may have implications for the treatment of diseases with "a gender component," like autism. [EurekAlert] » 10/21/09 5:45pm 10/21/09 5:45pm

Once again, The Onion hits a bit too close to home with this hilarious article about a theater audience that completely freaks out when performers leave the stage and take their act into the aisles. » 3/22/09 5:30pm 3/22/09 5:30pm

Prescient soothsayer Richard Lawson over at Gawker was totally right in his irrational hatred » 10/07/08 2:30pm 10/07/08 2:30pm

Does this picture make you clench your anus in horror, sweat and dart your eyes around wildly? If so, you might be arachnophobic! Or a Republican, especially if it also makes you want to nuke Iran, force-march illegal immigrants back to Mexico, firebomb abortion clinics and do... something with gay people (yeah, I ran… » 9/19/08 3:40pm 9/19/08 3:40pm

John McCain has told us all that he didn't want to go negative, it's just that no one was paying attention to him when he wasn't acting like an asshole, what with the long Democratic primary season and the historic nature of the Democrats' options and whatnot. So, he had » 9/15/08 10:00am 9/15/08 10:00am

Last week, in honor of the 35th anniversary of the publication of Fear of Flying and the acquisition of Erica Jong's papers by Columbia University, the author herself gave a talk about Flying's role in the feminist pantheon. Rebecca Traister of Salon thinks of Flying more as a sex book than as a feminist book (Jong on… » 4/07/08 3:00pm 4/07/08 3:00pm