Disadvantages of total lack of fear?

A given character is completely incapable of experiencing any type of fear and has been from at least since he was a very young child. How would this affect his personality?

They wouldn't understand why it's bad to do something that could kill them.

You could research amygdala damage, since many people with damage to that area are incapable of feeling fear. Then imagine the impact of that on a young child.

Another thought - evidence shows that psychopaths are often unable to feel fear. Now, this is also combined with not feeling guilt, so a person who feels guilt but not fear wouldn't be a psychopath, but there's evidence that fearlessness makes the person unresponsive to punishments (you can't fear them happening), which results in some behavior problems.

edited 4th May '11 2:52:55 PM by Ettina

The person can still feel pain, right? So to avoid pain, he/she learns to avoid injury. Children aren't very good at long-term thinking, though, so it would be a long hard road. Probably has lots of scar tissue, possibly some disabilities such as a limp, poor hearing, one eye, etc. Still with the attitude "no pain no gain" though. Prone to acting without thinking through all the consequences, socially as well as physically.

Interesting situation—person without fear meets person who manipulates others through fear.

Death

Carelessness. Willingness to walk on girders without a harness for example.

Coincidentally, that was the exact scenario I considered the fearless character for. Confronting a creature whose powers are derived from manipulating the fear in others.

Not just that, it's complete and total recklessness. It would manifest elsewhere, like with troubles understanding causality (relationship between cause and effect).

Not necessarily. You don't have to be afraid of something to know it's a stupid thing to do. He'll be able to walk across girders if necessary, but he wouldn't just do it on a whim. I'm thinking if he's lived his whole life without fear, that he would have to develop some super common sense to make up for it. I'm guessing he likes survival as much as everybody else, not because he fears death, but because he loves life. He'd be able to take the odd risk every now and then, a lot more than the average person, but he isn't going to needlessly put his life on the line if he doesn't have to.

^ Well, he wouldn't randomly kill himself on a whim, but it would take considerably less to convince him to do something dangerous than it would for the average person. Probably would do a lot of high risk/high reward things - eg gambling.

Um.... recklessness???

My hero isn't immune to fear, but he does wind up dying because he lost his fear of the villain, causing him to no longer slip under the villain's radar.

John Seinfeld Hansen, The Hero in my story, isn't fearless but learned to suppress his fear ridiculously well. It's not much of a fearlessness but utter devotion to his mission, but because of it, in the end, his body suffers ENORMOUS physical trauma that more or less disables him.

I have a fearless character, who estimate coldly the probabilities of death in any given situation to compensate.

However, he's kinda the Determinator, so most of the time he ends up rushing until he estimates that his death is imminent (Or that someone's else is gonna die soon)...He also never fights alone, so that someone can help him in those situations...

edited 5th May '11 1:48:29 PM by DhanaRagnarok

Since fear tends to motivate some of our more basic human actions, I think a disadvantage of being totally fearless would be an inability to hold a romantic relationship for long—not being afraid would also mean not being afraid to express some of the less desirable/more offensive parts of your personality in front of them, and they would feasibly be driven away.

People might think he's just stupid. Like that old fairy tale "The Boy Who Learned to Shudder".

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm004.html

The original is good, but somehow, I think the ending they gave it in Jim Henson's The Storyteller was much better.

There is actually a clinical condition.

http://www.livescience.com/9125-woman-fear-intrigues-scientists.html

The good side? A biologically fearless person cannot be intimidated or cowed into submission. *at all*.

The bad side? It's unclear how much of a sense of self-preservation a 100% fearlessly person would have. I suppose they'd be immensely reckless and, in all likelihood, would not live to 50.

edited 10th May '11 12:37:04 AM by SavageHeathen

↑Well, there's still whatever basic level of self-preservation do instincts provide, yes? I mean, I'm assuming fear is a human condition.

Well, fear is the instinct that generally makes self-preservation work.

People try to avoid doing absurdly dangerous stuff because they're sort of afraid of dying. If you would merely prefer not to die, like a Dragon Age Tranquil, I'm not sure you'd have much in the way of self-preservation.

Early on in life, wouldn't the person have trouble understanding fear in other people if they didn't feel it, themselves? I mean, eventually they'd learn through the reactions of others through certain things, but it would be difficult to feel empathy towards something that you have no personal concept of. Even once you know of it in a factual sense, it's possible that you still wouldn't understand it.

[strike]serial killer[/strike]

My bad, I meant psychotic. My understanding is that people with the actual psychotic disorder in the medical sense, have nearly no fear, hell, barely any emotions. Serial killers can be psychotic, but most aren't. Also to not be confused with the sociopath.

So it could mean brain damage, rendering him in capable of empathy, emotion, and fear. Which COULD in turn make him a rare breed of serial killer. But he will probably go on merry merry like most psychotic people do, just being jerks.

Oh, and if he is a psychopath, he could be very charming and charismatic. Without emotion holding him back like it does most people, he wouldn't be inhibited like most other people in being a good lair, or a complete jerk out of guilt. Also note if you choose this, they still have emotion and fear, just not much. Mostly lacking in fear.

edited 10th May '11 8:57:25 PM by jasonwill2

@silent I don't think fear is just a human thing I've seen my dog be afraid. She even has irrational fears of some specific places.

I believe fear is very basic and most mamals have some kind of fear response which helps them avoid danger.

edited 10th May '11 10:30:22 PM by HistoryMaker

A fearless charicter would be capable of recklessness but not true courage. They would be very confident, and they would likely die young.

their threat-assessment capability would be...ineffective at self preservation