• University of California, Irvine

• PSYCH 120

A. Specific Phobias Phobic disorders (most common anxiety disorder)

symptoms: shows strong and persistent fear that is triggered by the presence of a specific object or situation (excessive and

unreasonable). When people with specific phobias encounter the thing they're afraid of, they often show an immediate fear

response that resembles a panic attack, except there is existence of a clear external trigger. These same individuals will experience

anxiety if they anticipate they may encounter a phobic situation/encounter and go to great lengths to avoid this. fear or anxiety is

out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context. typically lasting for 6

months or more. causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning.

Subtypes of Specific Phobias

• animal: snakes spiders dogs insects birds, natural environment: storms, heights, water, blood injection/injury (occurs in

3-4%): seeing blood or an injury, seeing an injection, seeing a person in a wheelchair… experience disgust as well,

accompanied by dizziness, fainting..drop in heart rate and blood pressure. characteristics of fight or flight response..might

have evolved bc fainting while under attack might inhibit further attack, and drop in blood pressure would minimize blood loss

if attacked

• situational: public transportation, tunnels, bridges, elevators, flying. driving

• other: choking, vomiting, space phobia (fear of falling down if away from walls or other support)

theoretical perspectives on causes of the disorder: many psychological factors have been implicated in specific phobias - deep

seated psychodynamic conflicts to relatively straightforward traumatic conditioning of fear and individual differences in who is at risk

for conditioning

• Psychoanalytic viewpoint: phobias represent a defense against anxiety that stems from repressed impulses from the id.

because it is too dangerous to know the repressed id impulse, the anxiety is displaced onto some external object or situation

that has some symbolic relationship to the real object of anxiety .

• Phobias as learned behavior: account based on learning theory which explains through classical conditioning. the fear

response can be readily conditioned to previously neutral stimuli. Ex. claustrophobia because she was locked in closets as a

child. 85% of people cite traumatic conditioning experiences as the source of their phobia. some can be un-cued panic

attacks (had an attack in a restaurant, now scared of restaurants)

• Vicarious Conditioning: simply watching a phobic person behaving fearful with his or her phobic object can result in fear being

transmitted. ex. boy watched grandpa die while vomiting, now has fear of vomiting.

• Individual differences in learning: the differences in life experiences among individuals strongly affects whether or not

conditioned fears or phobias will actually develop. for ex. years of experiences with friendly dogs and one bad dog bite might

not develop into a phobia. But some life experiences may serve as risk factors and make certain people more vulnerable to

phobias than others and other experiences may protect against the development of a phobia.

• ex. children who have had more previous non-traumatic instances with a dentist are less likely to develop dental

anxiety after a bad and painful experience than those who have had fewer non traumatic instances. monkeys seeing

other monkeys not afraid of snakes protected them against having a phobia when seeing the other monkeys that were

phobic against snakes.

• events that occur during conditioning experience are also important. might not gain a phobia against dogs if you could

escape the room you were in when he was biting you, as opposed to being in a locked room where you couldn't escape

you might gain more of a phobia.

• inflation effect suggests that a person who acquired a mild fear of driving after a small cash might be expected to develop

a full blown phobia if he was later physically assaulted, even though no automobile was present during this incident.

• verbal information can also alter and inflate level of fear…if someone says “you’re lucky to be alive because the man who

crashed into you lost his license due to a record of driving drunk and fatal car accidents”

• cognitions and thoughts might maintain our phobias bc we are constantly alert and directing attention towards the object

as opposed to leaving it out of sight out of mind.

• Evolutionary Preparedness for Learning Certain Fears and Phobias: People are much more likely to have phobias of snakes

water heights, than of motorcycles and guns. This is because of our evolutionary history…primates seem to be evolved to

rapidly associate certain items with frightening or unpleasant events. This Prepared learning occurs because those primates

and humans who rapidly acquired fears of certain objects/situations that posed real threats may have enjoyed a selective

advantage. So prepared fears are not innate but are easily acquired. guns and motorcycles were not present in our early

evolutionary history.

• Biological Causal Factors: genetic and temperamental variables affect the speed and strength of conditioning depending on

genetic makeup + personality.

• people who are carriers of one of the two variants of serotonin-transporter gene (s-allele) show superior fear conditioning

• genetic contribution found as well… in a twin study monozygotic (identical) were more likely to share animal and

situational phobias than dizygotic twins. this study also showed that environmental factors play a role.