Fear vs Anxiety - are they the same?

Fear n. an emotional state evoked by the threat of danger and usually characterized by unpleasant subjective experiences as well as physiological and behavioural changes. Fear is often distinguished from anxiety in having a specific object. Associated physiological changes include increases in heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, etc. (Oxford Medical Dictionary)
Fear n. an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger and accompanied by increased autonomic activity (Medline Plus)

Anxiety n. a generalized pervasive fear. (Oxford Medical Dictionary)
Anxiety n. 1: a painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually over an impending or anticipated ill 
2: an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physiological signs (as sweating, tension, and increased pulse), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with it. (Medline Plus)

From the above definitions fear and anxiety have much in common and in common language fear and anxiety may be used synonymously. Fear is an emotional response whilst anxiety is a psychological and physiological state and both are unpleasant, yet despite this unpleasantness both can be considered natural responses with evolutionary roles. Both have roles in protecting ourselves or others from negative consequences by eliciting appropriate reactions in difficult situations.

Fear is more specific and usually driven by more external stimuli. The impeding threat may be well defined as may the consequences. An example may be an oncoming car speeding towards us. The natural reaction is quick one of escape and avoidance, to get out of the way of the oncoming car. An evolutionary example would be of that of encountering a lion or snake inducing fear producing a survival driven response to flee the situation.

Fear conditioning is the learned recognition and appropriate response of an aversive stimulus and fears are largely conditioned human behaviour. The recognition of a stimulus as aversive may be learned from personal experience of bad outcomes such as a child learning of the hazards of water by near-drowning, or through observing the outcomes of others. Many fears are learned through experience in early childhood because babies naturally fear few things. Loud noises are one example of unconditioned fears related to sensory overload that produce an unconditioned response (usually crying) in babies. In Watson's Little Albert experiment, Albert wasn't frightened of the white rat. He was however upset by loud noise, but wasn't able to predict when loud noise might occur. The rat was a neutral stimulus, he had no fear conditioned or unconditioned towards the rat, in fact he appeared to like the white rat. The white rat (neutral stimulus) was then paired with the loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) producing the unconditioned response of crying. Over time the introduction of the white rat would make Albert cry, thus the rat had become a conditioned stimulus and the anticipatory fear it produced was the conditioned response, even if no loud sound occurred. Fear generalization also occurred where Little Albert associated anything fluffy and white as being a condtioned fear stimulus associated with the noise outcome.

Anxiety can be perceived as being different to fear in that its stimulus is less specific and often less externalized and may be related to scenarios that are less controllable or avoidable. Unlike fear which is a conditioned negative emotional response, anxiety may not have an identifiable trigger as its stimulus and produces a state of mind with generalized fear and negative emotion, underlying heightened arousal and perception of sensory inputs. Anxiety can also be seen as a future-oriented state of mind versus fear which may be a subjective emotion related to a stimulus being perceived at the present. Anxiety as a normal physiological state may serve to prepare us or keep us in a heightened state of arousal to interpret and cope with new or impending threats and to learn and adapt new and suitable responsive behaviours. If however the level of anxiety is disproportionate or occurs non-objectively to stimuli or situations not normally deemed as threatening or dangerous it may be considered unhelpful and possibly pathological if it results it changes to the ability to function normally or starts to induce abnormal learned behaviours such as avoidance or ongoing generalized perpetual fear.