Lecture 17 - Evolution Of Anxiety

Question 1

Give some examples if fears that are non associative? What do we mean by this?

Answer 1

Heights, snakes, spiders, strangers.

By this we mean fears in which the fear seems to be innate and spontaneous. Predisposed to learn this fears even on a single exposure.

Question 2

What relevance does mismatch have to anxiety?

Answer 2

A lot. Our fears made sense in ancestral times for example, when spiders and snakes were dangerous and heights could mean being trapped by predators more easily. But in the current modern environment we don’t really have any poisonous snakes or spiders in the uk so the fear is pointless.

However things that are actually dangerous in modern conditions, cars, guns and alcohol for example, aren’t innately programmed to cause fear

Question 3

What is hypophobia?

What are the main problems?

Answer 3

Maladaptive lack of anxiety , first theorised by marks

Main issue is physical damage, not so much psychological damage. Put yourself in harms way a lot more.

Question 4

At what age does a fear of heights first occur in humans? How can this be tested ?

Answer 4

Age 6-8 months when children start crawling. Measure using the visual cliff paradigm.

Question 5

What interesting results were found in a study that looked at adults with a fear of heights?

Answer 5

The study found that adults with a fear of heights had an almost 0% fall rate as children, whereas those without the fear had a lot more accidents.
Not really classical conditions, where they learnt to fear heights after falling, instead it suggests that a fear of heights could be a personality trait, which is highly heritable.

Question 6

Anxiety is sometimes thought of as a defence mechanism…what are the two simple ways it’s often divided?

Answer 6

Fight or flight

Question 7

Cantor (2009) suggests an argument for there actually being 6 types of response anxiety. What are they?

Answer 7

Avoidance
Attentive immobility 
Withdrawal 
Aggressive defence 
Appeasement 
Tonic Immobility

Question 8

Give some basic points about what anxiety is? Pleasant/ unpleasant, localised or global?

Answer 8

• unpleasant increase in arousal
• universal and cross - cultural
• one of the basic emotions
• adaptive, when triggered appropriately, maladaptive when triggered excessively or inappropriately