Anxiety
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40 free Anxiety trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Anxiety is one of the most common human experiences, and one of the strangest. The same alarm system that kept our ancestors alive can now be set off by an exam, a crowded room or an unanswered message, and scientists have spent more than a century working out why. This quiz gathers the fun facts people go looking for: what happens in the body when nerves strike, which chemicals and brain regions are involved, where everyday words for worry came from, and how artists, philosophers, film-makers and athletes have described it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question leaves you with something to pass on. The questions start easy and climb toward the history and science that will test psychology students and anyone who has lived with a worried mind. Nothing here is medical advice; it is simply a friendlier way to learn how fear and worry work.
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Q 01In Pixar's Inside Out 2, which colour is Anxiety, the frazzled new emotion voiced by Maya Hawke?
Orange
Orange Anxiety catastrophizes every situation in 13-year-old Riley's head, all with the stated aim of saving her from bad outcomes.
Q 02A tongue-in-cheek Canadian medical paper diagnosed which Winnie-the-Pooh character with generalized anxiety disorder?
Piglet
Piglet, the doctors joked, could have been spared his heffalump-trapping trauma had he been given an antipanic medicine when young.
Q 03Which Peanuts character popularised the term security blanket by clutching one through Charles M. Schulz's comic strip?
Linus
Linus made the phrase famous in the 1950s, although children were soothing themselves with comfort blankets long before Peanuts.
Q 04Tiny handmade worry dolls, tucked under a pillow to carry off a child's fears overnight, come from which country?
Guatemala
Guatemala's highland legend says a Maya princess, Ixmucane, received a gift from the sun god that let her solve any human problem.
Q 05Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky's popular book on stress explains why which African animals do not get ulcers?
Zebras
Zebras face stress in short bursts, such as running from a lion, while humans keep the same alarm ringing for months over things like losing a job.
Q 06Patient S.M., dubbed the woman with no fear, lost which part of her brain to the rare Urbach–Wiethe disease?
Amygdala
Amygdala damage left her merely curious when handling snakes or touring a haunted sanatorium, yet breathing carbon dioxide could still make her panic.
Q 07White coat syndrome, brought on by nerves in a doctor's office, gives a falsely high reading of which measurement?
Blood pressure
Blood pressure that is normal at home can climb in the clinic, so doctors often check with a monitor the patient wears or uses at home.
Q 08Which insects give their name to the fluttery stomach feeling caused when nerves divert blood away from the gut?
Butterflies
Butterflies first fluttered in print in a 1908 novel by Florence Converse, whose nervous character felt as if he had one in his stomach.
Q 09The word yips, for a nervous twitch that ruins fine movements, was reportedly popularised by a player of which sport?
Golf
Golf professional Tommy Armour is said to have popularised the word to explain the troubles that made him give up tournament play.
Q 10Which tranquilliser, launched by Roche in 1963, was America's best-selling medicine for more than a decade?
Valium
Valium sold more than two billion tablets in 1978 alone, having been devised by chemist Leo Sternbach as an improved version of Librium.
Q 11Which hormone, known in the United States as epinephrine, surges after a sudden fright to speed up the heart?
Adrenaline
Adrenaline also widens the pupils, raises blood sugar and sends extra blood to the muscles, so the body is primed to move at once.
Q 12Which hormone, often called the stress hormone, naturally surges in the first 45 minutes after waking each morning?
Cortisol
Cortisol can jump by 38 to 75 percent soon after the eyes open, a daily spike that researchers call the awakening response.
Q 13Which three-word phrase did American physiologist Walter Cannon coin to describe an animal's response to threats?
Fight or flight
Q 21Which Norwegian artist said a walk under a blood-red sunset inspired his 1893 image of modern humanity's anxiety?
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch first exhibited The Scream under a German title meaning the scream of nature, and both painted versions have since been stolen and recovered.
Q 22Which Danish philosopher published The Concept of Anxiety in 1844 under a pen name meaning the watchman of Copenhagen?
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard held that people, unlike animals led by instinct, find their own freedom of choice both appealing and terrifying.
Q 23Which poet won a Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety, a long poem set in a wartime New York bar?
W. H. Auden
Fight or flight first appeared in Cannon's 1915 book on bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage; he also developed the theory of homeostasis.
Q 14Benzodiazepines, prescribed for anxiety since the 1960s, work by enhancing which calming neurotransmitter?
GABA
GABA is the chief inhibitory messenger of the central nervous system, which is why these medicines also relax muscles and stop seizures.
Q 15SSRI antidepressants, widely prescribed for anxiety, work by blocking the reabsorption of which brain chemical?
Serotonin
Serotonin is mostly made far from the brain: about 90 percent of the body's supply comes from the gut, where it regulates intestinal movements.
Q 16Which stimulant blocks the brain's adenosine receptors and, above about 400 mg, raises the odds of panic attacks?
Caffeine
Caffeine even has its own entry in the DSM-5, where caffeine-induced anxiety disorder is listed among the anxiety disorders.
Q 17Chest pain during a bout of sudden panic often sends people to hospital convinced they are having which other emergency?
A heart attack
A heart attack has to be ruled out, but panic itself is not physically dangerous and usually peaks within about ten minutes.
Q 18People who hyperventilate during panic were long told to breathe into which household item, advice doctors now reject?
A paper bag
A paper bag makes you rebreathe carbon dioxide, a trick devised by New York physician Alexander Winter that can do harm if the real cause is asthma.
Q 19Which anti-anxiety pill, developed at Upjohn and approved in 1981, is among America's most prescribed benzodiazepines?
Xanax
Xanax is a brand of alprazolam, which Upjohn chemist Jackson Hester Jr. had patented a full decade before it reached pharmacies.
Q 20The word anxious descends from the Latin verb angere, which carried which violent physical meaning?
To strangle
To strangle, pain or distress is the sense dictionaries give for angere, so the tight throat of worry is built into the word itself.
W. H. Auden's poem moved Leonard Bernstein to compose his Symphony No. 2, which carries the same title.
Q 24Which comedy filmmaker directed and starred in High Anxiety, a spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thrillers?
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks screened the film privately for Hitchcock, who left without a word, then sent over a case of wine days later to show his approval.
Q 25Which Oscar-winning actress has described having panic attacks from the age of seven?
Emma Stone
Emma Stone later talked her parents into a move to California with a PowerPoint presentation she called Project Hollywood.
Q 26Which NBA champion with the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers revealed that a panic attack during a game led him to therapy?
Kevin Love
Kevin Love went public in March 2018 after DeMar DeRozan spoke about his depression, and set up a fund for emotional well-being the same year.
Q 27Sigmund Freud's 1909 case study of Little Hans analysed a five-year-old Viennese boy's fear of which animals?
Horses
Horses scared the boy, Herbert Graf, so badly that he dreaded going into the street; he grew up to produce opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Q 28In the 1920 Little Albert experiment, John B. Watson taught a baby to fear which animal using a loud noise?
A white rat
A white rat was paired with the clang of a hammer on a steel bar each time the baby touched it; critics now call the famous results uninterpretable.
Q 29Which tranquilliser, launched in 1955, became America's first blockbuster psychiatric drug?
Miltown
Miltown was plugged so heavily by comedian Milton Berle on his television show that he took to calling himself Uncle Miltown.
Q 30Which medicines, used by orchestra musicians against stage fright, cost a pistol shooter two 2008 Olympic medals?
Beta blockers
Beta blockers slow the pulse and calm tremors, and a 1987 survey found 27 percent of players in the largest US orchestras had used them.