The Evolution of Anxiety

LZ Granderson: Is there an evolutionary explanation for anxiety and the like hyper vigilance or maybe even false positives in threat detection, which were actually conducive to survival in our ancient ancestors? LZ: I mean, anxiety is about fear of some future event, future loss. And so it's not actually responding to a real concrete fear that is present before us. It's responding to the possibility of a saber tooth tiger lurking out there somewhere in the darkness. So we might survive if we're more vigilant than actual circumstances demand we should be. But what anxiety does is that it hijacks that system by hijacked us into the future.