Fear may be better said as “the unfamiliar”, but unfortunately I’m confident in this point haha. Did a psych degree, and basically our reptilian brain (fight/flight/flee centre) makes those snap decisions based on previous experience (familiar: friend or unfamiliar: foe?). We can relatively easily override it (e.g. curiosity about the newest swiffer), but if we don’t know to do that, our brains default to “oh I’ve heard of that one before, is friend”