Are Fear and Anxiety Truly Distinct?

Abstract

Fear and anxiety are largely seen as separate entities, a distinction that inspires and shapes basic and clinical research. Evidence for this distinction has a rich translational base and comes from physiological, behavioral, and neurobiological studies. However, there is a high degree of inconsistency and a number of fundamental limitations that lead us to question the validity of the distinction. We consider a range of studies examining specifically whether and how the distinction may manifest at the neural, physiological, and behavioral levels, and we highlight a number of inconsistencies that call the distinction into question. We go on to critically examine assumptions in approaches to the fear-anxiety distinction and consider the implications that these assumptions may have in weighing evidence for and against the distinction. Acknowledging the contention over whether emotion research in animals is easily translatable to subjective experience in humans, we conclude that although the distinction between fear and anxiety has proved useful and informative, there are a number of reasons for recognizing that it is an oversimplification and that future progress may be guided, but should not be limited, by it.

Keywords: Anxiety; Clinical; Conditioning; Fear; Models; Translational.