That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Being Scared to Fly

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

For a lot of us, flying is not a comfortable experience. However, even after the lineups, the expensive goods, and dealing with delays and cancellations, some people are still anxious about the flight itself. Why is that? In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind why we become afraid when flying. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Kergolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. I have had to do this before, but I just want to apologize. Our release over the summer has been a bit up and down. We're trying to get one out a week. We released last Monday. This is going to come out today, Friday.

It's just got to do with the reality of summers at a university. Matt's taking time off. I've been away and other stuff that's happening. So our apologies, but we are going to get you an episode every week in a bite. And of course, once we get to September, we're back to the regular swing of things and life goes back to normal. And we'll try to be a bit more scheduled. It also comes down to the fact that this podcast is entirely done by yours truly and Matt with no other real support. And that can be tricky. Now today's topic comes from a listener. Remember if you have ideas, follow me on Twitter and DM me.

That's the best way to get a hold of me, at that neuroscience guy. But you can also email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. Both ways work. I check Twitter far more frequently than I check that email address. But pretty much every episode in this fifth season has been planned or suggested by you, the listener. And the question that came in on this one was, you know, back in season two, I talked about fear and where fear comes from. But it was a very specific question, which I really liked because one, it's something that I'm susceptible to. And two, it is the neuroscience of daily life.

and two, it is the neuroscience of daily life. So the question is this, are you one of those people that's afraid to fly? I have to admit, I don't know if I'm afraid to fly. I fly a lot for work, you know, every two to three weeks realistically, but I've never been comfortable flying. But some people are really afraid of flying,. They just don't like to fly. So on today's episode, the neuroscience behind why we're afraid to fly. Now, I'm sure you've all heard this, but the statistics on flying are actually pretty clear. Flying is safe. You are far more likely to die driving your car, riding your bike, or even crossing the street than you

are to die in a plane crash. Yet a large percentage of people that fly are afraid of flying or if nothing else, they're anxious or nervous. So why are people afraid to fly? Well, first of all, for some people, it's something unusual. As I mentioned, I fly a lot for work. Before the COVID pandemic, I was doing 100,000 miles a year with Air Canada. I'm slowly heading back into that space. But for a lot of people, it's unusual. They don't fly very often. And when something's unusual, when our brain's processing this, there's just a lot of unknowns. All right. If you're sitting on a plane and even when our brain's processing this, there's just a lot of unknowns. All right. If you're sitting on a plane and even when the landing gear comes up, you know, those of us that fly a lot know what that sound is. But if you don't know what that sound is, it's unusual

and you might think something is wrong. So there's an experience thing here. And we'll come back to this when we talk about brain mechanisms. But part of the reason people are afraid to fly is it's just something unusual for them. All right. They're not familiar with the sounds and the experience. And the first time you encounter turbulence, of course, especially if it's severe, well, wow, it's kind of normal to freak out a little bit if you don't know what's going on. And what I mean by this specifically is let's say you do hit a big air pocket and the plane just suddenly drops a fair distance. Well, if you've never flown before, you probably don't know what an air pocket is. You probably don't know it's kind of normal for planes to do this, at least in certain

weather conditions. So you might literally think the plane is falling from the sky because you simply don't have the experience. And like I said, we'll talk about that in a bit when I get back to the brain stuff behind all this. There's the situation itself. Another reason why you might be afraid to fly, you are literally sitting in a chair in the sky. You know, it's something that is a bit not normal, even if you're used to flying.

You know, today's airliners, you're probably up above 30,000 feet, close to 40,000 feet for some of them, and you're in a chair in the sky. So the situation itself, for some people, can lead it to fear, just like someone can be afraid of heights. I was in Toronto a while back and I went up the CN Tower and they have some stretches where you can walk on a plexiglass plate and you can literally look down from a very, very tall structure. And some people are terrified. And logically, it shouldn't make sense because the reality is they wouldn't put the plexiglass there

if it wasn't able to hold your body weight. But people still have that fear as well. So the situation for flying, you know, can lend itself to fear. There's, of course, the news. As social creatures, most of us pay attention to the news in some way, shape, size, or form. For some of us, it's relying purely on social media. For other people, it's watching you know cnn or fox news on a regular basis but the reality is when there's a plane crash it's a big deal

and it's a big deal for two reasons one if the news carried every time there was a car crash that would be the only thing on the news right same with getting hit by a car while you cross the road but plane crashes crashes, like I said, in terms of the stats, are incredibly rare, and they tend to involve a tragic and massive loss of life. So the news puts it there for us. And if you're someone that doesn't fly a lot, you see this and you think, oh my gosh, that's just because you just don't see car crashes on the news very often. So it's something that's portrayed as this event that could happen to you. And probably the other reason people are afraid to fly, at least thinking in terms of the brain, is this idea that it's beyond our control. When you're driving a car, you're the

one behind the wheel and you're controlling the speed. You can push the brakes. But in a plane, you literally, unless you're the pilot, I guess, it's beyond your control. And our brains don't like that situation. We've talked a bit about the ownership bias in the past, but we tend to do better with things where we're in control. And it's just the way our brain looks at the world, because if you're in control, then the outcomes are dependent on what you do. When someone else is in control, then the outcomes are dependent on what you do. When someone else is in control, then the outcomes are dependent on them. And we tend to be biased towards these situations where we are in control. So four reasons why you might be afraid.

There's probably others. It's unusual. You don't do it very often. The situation itself, sitting in a chair in the sky is a bit rare. News portraying plane crashes is, you know, they are tragedies and they are big, but, you know, we see that and we draw information from that.

And last, this idea of things being beyond our control and we don't like that ability or inability, more correctly, to do something about it. In terms of brain mechanisms, if you've been listening throughout the five seasons, I'm hoping people are getting to a point where you can start making some predictions. But of course, it's the amygdala. All right, there's a tug of war between the amygdala and the insular cortex.

These are two key parts of the brain that play a role in our emotional responses. And I don't want to go deep into this, but there's also the prefrontal cortex. And that's our logical view. And if it's very emotional, that's going to trump our logical information from the prefrontal cortex. It's telling us that things are okay and this isn't really that bad. And your emotional system's just kind of running out of control a little bit. And I'll get back to that when we talk about what you can do about being afraid to fly. And there's also the worldview model and the way the brain handles this. And again, we've talked about this in the

past. I don't want to go over it in depth, but if you recall, the idea is pretty simple. The left part of the prefrontal cortex is basically responsible for maintaining a worldview. And if you think about what I talked about earlier on this episode, if your worldview is that plane crashes are a thing and that they're dangerous, well then guess what? That's what your worldview is. So you come to believe that. And this is where experience becomes really important because the more you fly, the right prefrontal cortex should be kicking in and updating your worldview that flying is safe. It's not that bad. And hopefully that does happen. It doesn't every time. And in fact, if every time you fly,

you hit bad turbulence, you could imagine that that's updating your worldview that, hey, things are actually worse than what I think they are. But in principle, every time you have a good, calm, safe flight, your brain and the right prefrontal cortex should be telling the left prefrontal cortex to update the worldview. Now, what can you do about it? There are the unhealthy things that you can do. I have to admit there was a phase in my life where before any flight, I would go to the pub or bar in the airport and have a couple of pints of beer. And the logic was that this would calm me down. But it's actually a flawed assumption and it's flawed for a couple of

reasons. One, it does calm you down a little bit. But the reality is it doesn't change whether a plane is going to crash or not. And this is kind of what I mean about the logical brain needing to win. You know, the prefrontal cortex should be smart enough to know that there's no correlation between having a couple of beers and the outcome of a given flight. The other reason this strategy doesn't work that well, and I myself have moved away from it, is initially alcohol will calm you down a little bit, but it also ramps up your emotional responses. So imagine you're up in the sky and you've had a couple of drinks and all of a sudden you do encounter a bit of turbulence. Well, if you were

in a great brain state, you hadn't had those pints, your prefrontal cortex should win the argument with your amygdala and your insular cortex and say, hey, it's okay. This is turbulence. The plane's not going to crash. I'm okay. But after those couple of drinks, guess what? Those emotional responses are ramped up. All right. They are ramped up and people behave irrationally. They believe the plane is going to crash. On a side note, when you hear about air rage, and it seems like almost every day a plane's being diverted now because some passenger causes a disruption. Well, every time I read those articles, you find that the disruptive passenger has had too many drinks. And guess what? It's the same thing.

They're basically turning off their prefrontal cortex and that logical system, and they're letting their emotional system run wild. So the person that's annoying them annoys them even more, and they make very poor choices. In terms of what you can do about being afraid of flying from a healthy neuroscience perspective, number one is educate yourself. You know, there's a lot of great websites that walk you through why flying is safe. All right, it's the statistics, it's what turbulence is,

it's how planes handle turbulence turbulence and all of these things. There's experience. The more you fly, the more comfortable you should be with it. And I have to admit, now that I fly, you know, literally every two to three weeks, my fear of flying personally is definitely alleviated by the fact that all of those flights have ended safely. And of course, there's other things you can do. We've talked about this on previous episodes in terms of brain health, but anything that's good for brain health means you'll be in a better emotional state to handle flying. So you've heard this many times, but try to get a good sleep the night before, which can be difficult if you're afraid about flying the next day. Exercise the day of a flight.

Go for a big walk. Go for a run. Do something. Get the blood flowing. And eat healthy. Again, this is a time. And drink healthy based on what I just said. If you're about to fly, these are things that put your brain in an optimal state

to handle the little bit of emotional turmoil that you might experience when you're about to fly or flying. And the other two that I like to throw out there are mindfulness activities, breathing, for instance, which I really like. I'm big into deep breathing these days, and I find it as a calming effect. And any form of mindfulness, meditation, yoga, these things will help you to avoid being afraid to fly. Well, there you are. A very specific episode, thanks to a listener. Why are we afraid to fly and what can I do about it? So you've got it all there. The brain mechanisms, why you're afraid to fly

and some tips on how you can deal with it. Now, remember, of course, I already mentioned Twitter, so I won't mention it again, but check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to Patreon where you can support us. Thank you as ever to the people that are sending money in. It all goes to Matt, a graduate student in my lab. And of course, there's our Etsy store.

It's become almost a joke with me and Matt about when the new t-shirts are coming out and we're working on it. But if you have any ideas, let us know as well. And of course, there's the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you and please subscribe. My name is Olof Kregolsen and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another neuroscience bite.