Phobias

Overview

• Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder where a person shows uncontrollable or irrational fear toward an object or situation. Phobias are broadly classified into categories:

  • Specific phobias are irrational fear toward objects like snakes and dogs, or situations like flying or enclosed spaces. 

  • Social phobias are irrational fears about being embarrassed or humiliated in front of other people, so these fears involve being around people or public speaking. 

• For some, phobias can be annoying or only slightly disruptive to their lives. For others, the fear and anxiety can be some intense that it can make life extremely difficult.  For example, people with specific phobias are up to 60 percent more likely to attempt suicide.

• According to the National Institute of Health, about 9.1% of the U.S. population has a specific phobia, with it occurring more often in females (12.2%) than males (5.8%).  About 22% of phobias are considered serious, 30% moderate, and 48% mild.  

• Some phobias are more common than others. We have innate predispositions or preparedness (Seligman, 1971) to produce phobias for such things as snakes and spiders over things that are typically less harmful such as flowers. 

• For this lab, you will learn about different types of phobias and create a hypothesis of what factors contributed to the development of the phobia.  

Instructions

• Download the worksheet. 

• There are two good websites that have lists of phobias: Psychcentral and phobialist.com. Use these websites to fill in the missing cells of the worksheet. You can also just Google the phobia or object (e.g., "what is the phobia of spiders")

• In the worksheet, you will be given the name of the phobia (e.g., arachnophobia) and identify the object (e.g., spider) or vice versa. 

• You will also develop a hypothesis for how the phobia was created using references to classical (Pavlovian) conditioning through direct experiences or observation. 

• You will also make a conclusion of whether humans might have an innate (biological) predisposition or preparedness to make this type of phobia more easily than others.  

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