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#844 - Dr Laith Al-Shawaf - Why Do Humans Actually Have Emotions?
Modern Wisdom
Emotions Evolve for Safety, Not Accuracy
Emotions serve to promote adaptive actions rather than simply to ensure feelings of well-being. Aversive emotions can have functional roles, highlighting their evolutionary purpose. Specifically, anxiety is characterized as a hyperactive system that tends to generate false alarms, which can be understood through the smoke detector principle. This principle illustrates that systems can be designed to favor false positives to prevent catastrophic outcomes. Consequently, human anxiety operates on a similar logic, prioritizing the detection of potential threats—even at the cost of accuracy—to enhance survival. Hence, the apparent flaws in anxiety are not defects but rather adaptive features that reflect an evolutionary bias towards safety.
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