phobias

Question 1

Anxiety vs fear

Answer 1

No activation of the fight or flight response in anxiety

Question 2

Is anxiety good?

Answer 2

Mild amounts of anxiety can be helpful when experiencing exams or when driving

Question 3

Adaptive value of anxiety

Answer 3

Can allow us to anticipate upcoming frightening events by mobilising resources

Question 4

Learned anxiety

Answer 4

Many of our anxiety responses are learned and highly conditionable

Question 5

Various anxeity disorders

Answer 5

Many individuals with one anxiety disorder can experience another kind of anxiety disorder or depression at a later point in their lives
Classical conditioning of fear or panic to a range of stimuli plays an important role in many disorders
Many common themes in treatments for anxiety disorders

Question 6

Neuroticism

Answer 6

Proneness or disposition to experience negative mood states

Question 7

Specific phobia

Answer 7

Present if a person shows strong and persistent fear that is triggered by the presence of a specific object or situation and leads to significant distress or impairment in a person’s ability to function

Question 8

Blood-injection-injury phobia

Answer 8

Can faint when presented with phobia
Highly heritable
Drop in blood pressure can minimise blood loss

Question 9

Prevalence of specific phobia

Answer 9

Occurring in about 12 percent of population
More common in women than men
Animal phobias begin in childhood but claustrophobia begins in adulthood

Question 10

Psychodynamic factors of specific phobias

Answer 10

Defence against anxiety that stems from repressed impulses from the id

Question 11

Learned behavioural factors of specific phobia

Answer 11

Fear response can be conditioned to previously neutral stimulus when paired with traumatic or painful events

Question 12

Vicarious conditioning

Answer 12

Watching someone else be fearful of a stimulus can lead us to be fearful of another stimulus

Question 13

Why doesn’t everyone develop a phobia?

Answer 13

Individual differences in life experiences strongly affect whether conditioned fears or phobias actually develop

Question 14

Evolutionary preparedness for learning certain fears and phobias

Answer 14

Evolved to be scared of things that can harm us
Guns are more dangerous than water but they weren’t around when we were evolving

Question 15

Öhman 2009 fear conditioning study

Answer 15

Fear is easily conditioned to fear relevant stimuli like snakes and spiders than fear irrelevant stimuli

Question 16

Biological causal factors for specific phobia

Answer 16

Individuals with serotonin transporter gene show superior fear conditioning

Question 17

Treatments for specific phobia

Answer 17

Exposure therapy is most effective treatment
Participant modelling is more effective than doing it alone
More effective to do it in one longer treatment as people only have to go once

Question 18

Social anxiety disorder

Answer 18

Characterised by fears of one or more specific social situations
Individual afraid of scrutiny and negative evaluation from others

Question 19

Prevalence of social anxiety disorder

Answer 19

12 percent of population meet diagnostic criteria for social anxiety at some point during their life
One third abuse alcohol to reduce their anxiety in social situations
Only a third recover spontaneously over a 12 year period

Question 20

Social anxiety as learned behaviour

Answer 20

Social anxiety seems to originate from experiencing or witnessing a perceived social defeat or humiliation
92 percent of people with social anxiety reported history of severe teasing in childhood

Question 21

Social anxiety in evolutionary context

Answer 21

Evolved as a by product of dominance hierarchies
Humans acquired fears of social stimuli that are based around aggression and dominance

Question 22

Perceptions of uncontrollability and unpredictability in social anxiety

Answer 22

Being exposed to uncontrollable and unpredictable events like parental divorce can lead to development of social anxiety
Perceptions of uncontrollability can lead to submissive behaviours

Question 23

Cognitive biases in social anxiety

Answer 23

People with social anxiety may behave poorly and awkwardly which will lead to negative reactions from others in social settings which can create a cycle of social anxiety

Question 24

Biological causal factors in social anxiety

Answer 24

Behavioural inhibition is most important temperamental variable
If infants are behaviourally inhibited then they will withdraw from social situations, leading to inexperience in social situations and further risk of developing social anxiety

Question 25

Cognitive perspectives on social phobia

Answer 25

Have high standards for social performance and entering a social situation activates these self judgements
Anxiety in social situation leads to limited cognitive resources, making individual behave worse
Post-analysis of social event is clouded about how we felt about the situation

Question 26

Mowrer’s two factor theory

Answer 26

Situation happening gets paired with anxious response
When seeing stimulus the anxious response happens

Question 27

Cognitive and behavioural treatments for social anxiety

Answer 27

Cognitive restructuring techniques help reorganise disorganised thoughts
May receive videotaped feedback to further reinforce changing of negative perception

Question 28

Medication as treatment for social anxiety

Answer 28

Antidepressants can be used for treating social anxiety unlike specific phobias
Medications must be taken over a long period of time to ensure relapse doesn’t occur
Combined with exposure therapy the treatment gains are more substantial then just medication alone