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When discussing how to pursue your despite mental health issues or phobias, the late Carrie Fisher wisely noted, “Stay afraid. But do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident.” As Princess Leia, Fisher showed us all how to face with boldness, chutzpah, and a twinkle in your eye—regardless of stereotypes about the hero or heroine’s journey.

Amelia Earhart (who was the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic in a solo flight) famously echoed Fisher’s sentiment when she said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

A new study on how close friends influence each other's attitudes about fear or fearlessness in the face of potential danger drives home the importance of encouraging one another to stay brave and to take action. This is especially true in the face of imaginary or phantom fears that often fuel phobias and tend to be nothing more than "paper tigers.”

The new research on how friends influence one another’s attitudes about fear was conducted by researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA). This study involved 242 British school children (136 girls, 106 boys) who were seven to 10 years old. The findings were published in the December 2016 issue of the journal Behaviour Research and .

Childhood Friends Can Exacerbate or Diminish One Another's Fear-Based Thinking

According to the researchers, this is the first study to show how children in close friendships exhibit common explanatory styles and patterns of fear-related thinking. This research suggests that conversations about a potentially fearful antagonist among close friends triggers a type of feedback loop. Children who frame potential danger as being more or less scary create a self-fulfilling prophecy which leads to either facing ambiguous fear head on or engaging in avoidance behaviors.

Although a child’s unrealistic fears of the “boogeyman” usually diminish over time, many children develop paralyzing fear-based responses that can interfere with daily life. If left untreated, childhood phobias and can continue into adulthood.

Parental and genetic influences are known to play a significant role in how a child becomes hardwired to respond to fear-provoking situations, however, this study suggests that the transmission of fear (or lack thereof) is also fueled by childhood peers and like-minded social networks. Just like violence or loving-kindness become contagious among peer groups, it seems that fear or fearlessness are also a social contagion that spreads between school-aged children.

In a statement to UEA, lead author, Jinnie Ooi, who conducted this research as part of her Ph.D. at UEA's School of Psychology, said she believes these findings could have a variety of practical implications for professionals working with children who suffer from phobias or anxiety disorders. Dr. Ooi described her latest study by saying,

"Our findings indicate that close friends may share negative thoughts and to some extent may maintain these thoughts. Hopefully, with this knowledge, we may be able to design interventions whereby close friends can help change their friends' thoughts during therapy. It may also be beneficial to ask children being treated for anxiety disorders to identify whether they have friends who may be influencing or maintaining their negative thoughts, and it may subsequently be useful for them to be given strategies for how to discuss these thoughts with peers in an adaptive way."​

Boy-Boy Friendships May Perpetuate Fearfulness More Than Girl-Girl Dyads

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The results of this experiment showed that children’s dialogue about an ambiguous or more clearly defined threat strongly influenced each other's fear and thoughts following a discussion. For better or worse, someone’s fear responses tended to mirror those of his or her close friend.

Interestingly, children in boy-boy pairs showed a significant increase in their fear responses following the discussion of something that was potentially threatening or dangerous. For boys, their level of fear and anxiety significantly reinforced itself in boy-boy pairs. But, the girl-girl pairs actually showed a significant decrease in their fear beliefs when they talked about something that might be potentially threatening or scary with a girlfriend.

One groundbreaking discovery of this research is that children's fear-related thoughts do not necessarily become more negative when children discuss their fears with close friends who are more anxious. The authors say this supports the use of group-based therapy.

Also, the findings suggest that school-based interventions aimed at reducing anxiety in primary school-aged children could instruct pairs of close friends to discuss and resolve their fears and anxiety in a positive manner with each other.

Role Models of Fearlessness Can Help Reframe Your Explanatory Style

Obviously, in light of Carrie Fisher’s death yesterday, millions of children and adults who grew up with Leia Organa of Alderaan as a fearless Princess who could fend for herself are in . Carrie Fisher was a powerful role model for being bold, outspoken, and hilarious even in the face of terrifying mental illness. Her premature death is a tragic loss on so many levels.

Breaking the cycle of unsubstantiated fear from snowballing out of control among peer groups and close friends throughout your lifespan should be a top priority for all of us. The latest research on how friends influence one another's tendency to be brave or fearful is a healthy reminder to stay proactive about avoiding the quagmire of living in fear—regardless of your age or gender. As Aristotle once said,

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions . . . He who has overcome his fears will truly be free."

Hopefully, having new empirical evidence and anecdotal examples of how fear can spread like wildfire (or not!) among school-age friends will lead to more effective treatments for childhood anxiety and phobias.

As an act of , the latest UEA study on how fear spreads among friends is a call to action for people of all ages to consciously adopt less fear-based explanatory styles, which appear to be contagious amongst friends.