Chapter 5

Question 1

three distinctive components of emotion

Answer 1

• physiological - physiological component involves changes in the autonomic nervous system that result in respiratory, cardiovascular, and muscular changes in the body
• cognitive - includes alterations in consciousness (e.g., in attention levels) and specific thoughts a person may have while experiencing a particular emotion

behavioural - tend to be consequences of certain emotions. For example,
if Greg experiences a panic attack during his exam, he may feel compelled to leave the situation

Question 2

Anxiety

Answer 2

Anxiety is an affective state whereby an individual feels threatened by the potential occurrence of a future negative event

Question 3

fear

Answer 3

fear is a more “primitive” emotion and occurs in response to a real or perceived current threat. Therefore, fear is “present oriented” in the sense that this emotion involves a reaction to something that is believed to be threatening at the present moment.

Question 4

“fight or flight” response

Answer 4

From an evolutionary perspective, fear is a very important emotion because of the behavioural response that it elicits.
This behavioural response is popularly known as the “fight or flight” response, so named because fear prompts a person (or organism) to either flee from a dangerous situation or stand and fight

Question 5

Panic

Answer 5

Panic is very similar to fear. However, whereas fear is an emotional response to an objective, current, and identifiable threat, panic is an extreme fear
reaction that is triggered even though there is nothing to be afraid of (it is essentially a “false alarm”)

Question 6

neurosis

Answer 6

Until 1980, anxiety disorders were classified together with the somatoform and dissociative disorders (see Chapter 6) under the heading of neurosis. In the eighteenth century, people who were not psychotic but who still had emotional problems were labelled “neurotic.”

• This term implied that the
  cause was presumed to be due to a disturbance in the central
  nervous system
• Freud thought that anxiety occurs because defence mechanisms failed to repress painful memories, impulses, or thoughts.

Question 7

Etiology: Neuroanatomy and neurotransmitters

Answer 7

• Begin with the registry of sensory information at the thalamus; this information is then sent to the amygdala.
• From the amygdala, information is sent to areas in the hypothalamus, and then through a midbrain area (the periaquaductal grey) to the brain stem and spinal cord.
• The brain stem and spinal cord connect with the various autonomic (e.g., increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature) and
  behavioural (e.g., freezing or flight) output components that are involved in the expression of fear

Question 8

Mowrer - two factor theory

Answer 8

Mowrer suggested that fears
develop through the process of classical conditioning and
are maintained through operant conditioning.

• In the first phase, a neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS)
  becomes paired with an inherently negative stimulus (e.g., a frightening event, the unconditioned stimulus, or UCS). The individual later learns to lessen this anxiety by avoiding the
  CS, a behaviour that is negatively reinforced through operant conditioning

Question 9

vicarious learning

Answer 9

• to develop fears by
  observing the reactions of other people
• Some people also develop fears by hearing fear-relevant information

Question 10

Cognitive factors - Beck

Answer 10

Beck proposed that people are afraid because of the biased perceptions that they have about the world, the future, and themselves. Anxious individuals often see the world as dangerous, the future as uncertain, and themselves
as ill-equipped to cope with life’s threats (Beck & Emery, 1985).

Individuals who are susceptible to anxiety often have core beliefs that they are helpless and vulnerable.

Question 11

Interpersonal factors of anxiety

Answer 11

• Parents who are anxious themselves tend to interact with their children in ways that are less warm and positive, more critical and catastrophic, and
  less granting of autonomy when compared to non-anxious parents.
• Such parenting styles may foster beliefs of helplessness and uncontrollability in children that contribute to a general psychological vulnerability to anxiety
• Children who develop an “anxiousambivalent” attachment style learn to fear being abandoned by loved ones. This attachment style may develop from interactions with parents who are inconsistent in their
  emotional caregiving toward the infant.

Question 12

Panic attacks

Answer 12

Panic attacks involve a sudden rush of intense fear or discomfort during which an individual experiences a number of physiological and psychological symptoms

Question 13

Agoraphobia

Answer 13

is anxiety about being in places or situations where an individual might find it difficult to escape

Question 14

behavioural avoidance test (BAT)

Answer 14

In this test, patients are asked to enter situations that they would typically avoid. They provide a rating of their degree of anticipatory anxiety and the actual level of anxiety that they experience.

Question 15

catastrophic misinterpretations

Answer 15

Cognitive theories focus on the idea that individuals with panic disorder experience catastrophic misinterpretations of their bodily sensations

• An individual with panic disorder, on the other hand, may quickly misinterpret these symptoms as a sign that something must be wrong (e.g.,
  “I am going to have a heart attack”).
• This reaction may then cause even more apprehension such that the person worries about additional symptoms. Although the intention is to
  reduce these sensations, they paradoxically increase because
  of the response of the autonomic nervous system (the fight or flight response) to real or perceived threat.
• This process continues until the person feels out of control and experiences another panic attack (see Figure 5.1). People may then begin to avoid situations or bodily sensations that become associated with having panic attacks.

Question 16

Anxiety sensitivity

Answer 16

Anxiety sensitivity has to do with the belief that the somatic symptoms related to anxiety will have negative consequences that extend beyond the panic episode itself.

Question 17

alarm theory

Answer 17

As mentioned earlier, unexpected panic attacks are not uncommon in the general population. When a real
danger is present, a “true alarm” occurs and our bodies kick in an incredibly adaptive physiological response that
allows us to face the feared object or flee from the situation.

Question 18

phobias

Answer 18

fears cause marked distress and significantly disrupt their daily
lives. When an individual’s fears are this extreme, we refer to them as specific phobias. Fears are adaptive reactions to threats in the environment, but phobias are excessive and
unreasonable fear reactions.

Question 19

The DSM-5 outlines five specifiers of specific phobia:

Answer 19

• animal type
• natural environment type
• blood injection-injury type
• situational type
• other type (includes illness phobia)
• Having a phobia from one of these subtypes increases the probability of developing another phobia within the same category

Question 20

equipotentiality premise

Answer 20

• One of the main criticisms of this
  conditioning model is that it assumes that all neutral stimuli have an equal potential for becoming phobias
• In other words, the chances of being afraid of a lamp and a snake are
  presumed to be equal. However, it is not the case that people have phobias for pretty much everything; rather, a select number of stimuli seem to be consistently related to phobias.

Question 21

nonassociative model

Answer 21

The nonassociative model proposes that the process of evolution has endowed humans to respond fearfully to a select group of stimuli (e.g., water,
heights, spiders), and thus no learning is necessary to develop these fears

• Evidence for nonassociative theories also comes from the finding that babies seem to be born with certain kinds
  of “prewired” anxiety that is elicited at various developmental stages

Question 22

biological preparedness

Answer 22

Seligman (1971) argued that there has to be more to their etiology than classical conditioning. He suggested that people are more likely to fear certain types of stimuli because
of biological preparedness

• Similar to the nonassociative model, it is believed that the process of natural selection has equipped humans with the predisposition to fear objects
  and situations that represented threats to our species over the course of our evolutionary heritage. However, unlike the nonassociative model, associative learning is still necessary to develop a phobia.

Question 23

Disgust sensitivity

Answer 23

Disgust sensitivity refers to the degree to which people are susceptible to being disgusted by a variety of stimuli such as certain bugs, types of food, and small animals

Question 24

social anxiety disorder (social phobia)

Answer 24

a marked and persistent fear of social or performance-related situations. Often their anxiety focuses on the fear of acting in a way that will be humiliating or embarrassing. People with social anxiety have an underlying fear of being evaluated negatively and frequently worry about what others might be thinking about them.

Question 25

Etiology-social anxiety

Answer 25

• What seems largely to be inherited, however, is a predisposition to develop anxiety about social situations rather than the disorder itself. Behavioural inhibition is an early marker of risk for social anxiety disorder. Toddlers who are behaviourally inhibited are more
  than twice as likely to develop social anxiety by the end of adolescence when compared with non-inhibited toddlers
• Early psychosocial experiences play a large role in shaping an individual’s risk for social anxiety. 92 percent of an adult sample of individuals with social anxiety reported that they were bullied or severely teased during childhood; this was at least twice as frequent in social anxiety as it was in obsessive compulsive disorder or panic disorder

Question 26

generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)

Answer 26

in which the central difficulty involves uncontrollable and excessive worry (also called pathological worry). We all worry to some degree, but it becomes pathological when it is chronic, excessive, uncontrollable, and essentially takes the joy out of life

Question 27

Etiology-GAD

Answer 27

One thing that individuals with GAD appear to “avoid” by worrying is physiological arousal. The physical feeling of anxiety can be quite
discomforting and bothersome, and therefore avoidance of arousal is reinforcing to the individual. Interestingly, then, the process of worry tends to decrease somatic arousal

Question 28

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU)

Answer 28

• refers to an individual’s discomfort with ambiguity and uncertainty.
• individuals with GAD tend to have lower thresholds for these uncertainties, leading to anxiety and
  distress.
• IU is responsible for creating and exacerbating “what if . . . ” questions

Question 29

OCD

Answer 29

OCD are recurrent obsessions and compulsions that cause marked distress for the individual.

Question 30

Obsessions

Answer 30

Obsessions are defined as recurrent and uncontrollable thoughts, impulses, or ideas that the individual finds disturbing and anxiety-provoking

Question 31

Compulsions

Answer 31

Compulsions are repetitive behaviours or cognitive acts that are intended to reduce anxiety.

Question 32

Neutralizations

Answer 32

Neutralizations are behavioural
or mental acts that are used by individuals to try to prevent, cancel, or “undo” the feared consequences and distress caused by an obsession

Question 33

Thought-action fusion (TAF)

Answer 33

Thought-action fusion (TAF) refers to two types of irrational thinking:

(1) the belief that having a particular thought increases the probability that the thought will come true (e.g., “If I think about getting hit by a car, I’m more likely to get hit by a car”)

(2) the belief that having a particular thought is the moral equivalent of a particular action

Question 34

OCD Etiology

Answer 34

• patients with OCD have less brain volume in parts of the frontal cortex and more brain volume in parts of the basal ganglia than do individuals without OCD.

Question 35

OCD catastrophic misinterpretations

Answer 35

Individuals with OCD have high levels of personal responsibility and believe that their thoughts can influence the probability that others will be harmed.

When they have thoughts of harming another, for example, people with OCD tend to conclude: “This must mean I’m actually a dangerous person” or “There’s a greater chance I might actually harm someone.”

Question 36

Compulsions are believed to
persist because they tend to

Answer 36

(1) lower the severity of anxiety
(2) lower the frequency of obsessions
(3) “prevent” obsessions from coming true

Question 37

Pharmacotherapy - anxiety

Answer 37

• Before the development of antidepressants, benzodiazepines were the most widely prescribed psychiatric medication
• which functions to temporally inhibit activity broadly across neural sites, including brain systems that are involved in generating fear and anxiety.
• However, has side effects
• Exposure therapy: exposure therapies
  seek to increase clients’ self-efficacy by demonstrating to them that physiological symptoms of anxiety are not harmful in themselves, and that anxiety-provoking situations can be managed despite anxious feelings
• Antidepressant drugs are currently the most well-used and effective medications for the treatment of anxiety disorders
• Patients learn to become better scientists of their own thoughts by monitoring and identifying automatic thoughts and underlying beliefs, examining the validity of these cognitions, and developing more balanced appraisals. A number of strategies are used to help facilitate this
  process. One commonly used technique involves the thought record.

Question 38

systematic desensitization

Answer 38

With the assistance of a therapist, the patient develops a fear hierarchy.

Systematic desensitization starts
by having patients imagine the lowest feared stimulus and combining this image with a relaxation response. Patients gradually work their way up the fear hierarchy so that they can learn to handle increasingly distressing stimuli.

Question 39

fear hierarchy

Answer 39

A fear hierarchy is a list of feared situations or objects that are arranged in descending order according
to how much they evoke anxiety

Question 40

in vivo (meaning real life) exposure

Answer 40

t in vivo (meaning real life) exposure itself is more effective than imaginal exposure and that the inclusion of relaxation provides no better response than exposure alone

Question 41

worry imagery exposure

Answer 41

This involves systematic exposure
to feared images that are related to an individual’s worries.

Question 42

flooding or intense exposure

Answer 42

This involves starting at a very high level of intensity rather than working gradually through the fear hierarchy

Question 43

interoceptive exposure

Answer 43

Interoceptive exposure involves the induction of physical sensations (e.g., dizziness) by means of hyperventilating, spinning in a chair, exercising, and so on

Question 44

ritual prevention

Answer 44

Ritual prevention involves promoting abstinence from rituals that, while reducing anxiety in the short term, only serve to reinforce the obsessions in the long run