By: Avi Wyler

We all have our favorites – our favorite foods, places and past-times. These things bring us comfort and make us happy for a variety of reasons, and so we stick with them. But for some people, favorite things become more than just something that brings comfort; they become things people hang onto and don’t stray from. Why is this? Why is it that so often, when we find something we like, we stick to it without looking towards anything else? Why is it that so many of us shy away from trying new things?

The answer stems from the fear of change. We all have it: our brains are biologically wired to feel most comfortable when we know how something will go and feel in control of it. When we feel uncertain about something, our brain responds negatively: according to an NIH article published by Felicia Jackson, Brady Nelson and Greg Hajcak, the way our brains process uncertainty and error are intertwined. In the best case, we often feel uncomfortable not knowing. In the worst case, uncertainty can cause intense worry and anxiety. Because we don’t have the knowledge needed to be certain about new things, we respond negatively to them by default.

This fear of uncertainty also ties into our inherent need to pursue truth. In his article “Knowledge, fear of the unknown, opinion, and the pandemic”, Joshua Raub explains that our brains prefer the quickest path to certainty over one that’s most credible – it’s a survival instinct that protects us from immediate dangers. Unfortunately, this can quickly lead to misunderstandings or stereotyping, which can put someone off from new things even more.

Of course, fear of the unknown isn’t the only thing we base decisions on. Raub continues his article discussing the three main elements of decision making which, besides our uncertainty, includes our knowledge of a situation and our intuition. But it can be hard for our brains to maintain an equal balance of the three – said balance requires us to use our fear of the unknown as a way of motivating our search for new knowledge, else we get stuck using uninformed opinions to satisfy our want for truth.