Fear of Flying Essay

Fear of flying is created by the unconscious mind as a protective mechanism. When using the neutral stimulus explanation, Lauren may not have had a relevant response of interest. Lauren may have

This specific phobia can lead to the person experience of an intense fear when not being able to break out of a populated area (Barlow & Mavissakalian, pp 4). This causes people having to evade open and heavily crowed environments with little possibilities to exit over their massive fear of going through a panic attack. Therefore, today there are signs in many rides at themed parks that warn people of the closed areas. This specific category of phobias causes the person to fear traveling on bus or even waiting in a line. This phobia can also lead to being dependent of someone because they are too afraid to go outside of their homes. Barlow & Mavissakalian (1981 pp 4-5), implicated that the clinical picture painted is consistent and consists or fears of going out to public places and open and crowded places, fears of walking alone or using any means or public transportation, and fears of being alone at home. Agoraphobia is the most disabling of all phobias and usually begins in early adolescence.

Any college classroom became the NS before the conditioning. As discussed in class in the classical conditioning process “we learn to associate two stimuli and thus to anticipate events” (Myers & Denwall, 2016). Thus, speaking in front of a group in the public speaking class automatically developed anxiety (the UR) on me. The classroom itself did not produce any anxiety on me. But because of the association between the US and the NS during the conditioning, the classroom (NS) became the CS after conditioning. As I had to conduct my speech in a college classroom, any classroom alone could produce the anxiety (CR) on me. Moreover, I experienced the anxiety every time I spoke in front of a group no matter in which college class so the term generalization as part of the classical conditioning occurred. However, the concept of discrimination did not apply to my experience since I was always anxious no matter the classroom. After the repetition of the same experience I could anticipate my anxiety response while in any classroom not only in the public speaking class. My anxiety never diminished so extinction was not part of my experience. As you find yourself in the same situation the learned response first provoked by any classroom is eventually provoked by the first stimulus alone because once you know you must speak in front of a group in any college

Our understanding of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning has allowed us to unlock many of the answers we sought to learn about human behavior. Classical conditioning is a technique of behavioral training, coined by Ivan Pavlov, which basically states that an organism learns through establishing associations between different events and stimuli. This helps us understand human behavior in an assortment of ways. It makes it clear that almost everything we do is based on patterns of stimulus and response. For example, if you were bitten aggressively by a dog as a child, you may be still scared of dogs today. That is because the dog caused you pain, which in turn caused you have anxiety towards dogs.

In classical conditioning, there are four critical elements: the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned response, and the conditioned response. The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that causes a response before any conditioning, and an unconditioned response (UR) is the way something reacts to an unconditioned stimulus (text, p. 256). In my example, the US would be bad bacteria, and it resulted in the UR of nausea. A conditioned stimulus (CS) involves a neutral stimulus (NS), something that didn’t originally cause a reaction, becoming something that causes a conditioned response after a connection is made to the US (text, p. 256). In my example, the

I have this fear that causes my body to shake. When I think about it, my skin becomes pale and cold. It’s death speeding through my mind. Once I have seen these monstrous roller coasters, the only thing in my mind was fear. Knowing that I’m afraid to go on these rides, I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of my friends. My mind is thinking of deadly thoughts. My palms were sweaty and I was twitching like a fish. I was petrified of heights.

1. Which of the following best describes how classical conditioning might be used to treat a fear of heights?

Classical conditioning is learning that occurs when two stimuli- a conditioned stimulus (originally a neutral stimulus) and a unconditioned stimulus are paired and become associate with each other. Sarah was not afraid of ballet or anything to do with ballet before her mother’s death. However because she blames herself for it and it occurred on the day of her audition she associated her mother’s death with ballet. As a result she refused to dance or watch ballet. In the movie Derek takes her to this ballet show and she almost ran off because she was so emotional when she realized where he was about to take her. Sarah also had classical conditioned attitudes as a result of her classical conditioning. Sarah felt upset whenever Derek or anyone questioned about her mother or her term ‘used to dance’. She became annoyed or uninterested that was an attitude she learned to have due to the event. Sarah also acquired motives through her classical conditioning (leaned motives) where she avoided ballet or placed a mental block between her and dancing ballet.

Agoraphobia starts suddenly with an unexpected panic attack. This usually strikes while the person is outdoors. This is likely to cause the person to avoid the situation or place where the original panic attack occurred. The panic attacks then begin to occur more frequently, and once they begin to happen monthly or more often, it is likely that the full agoraphobic pattern will emerge. The reason why these initial panic attacks occur is not known, but stress is a major factor in the majority of cases. The antecedents of the panic attack response of agoraphobia are simply the four key elements in classical conditioning. One of these is the unconditioned response (UCR). The UCR is an unlearned reaction to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without previous conditioning. In the case of agoraphobia, the UCR would be a panic attack. The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is a stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without previous conditioning. In the case of agoraphobia, the UCS would be the situation the panic response first occurred in, for example, a busy street. The conditioned response (CR) is a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of previous conditioning. In agoraphobia, this would be the panic responses of fear and anxiety. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response. In agoraphobia, this would be the

Avoidance and numbing represent a flight response to stimuli associated with the traumatic event(s). In fact, avoiding people,

The theory of Classical Conditioning is one based on the idea that an individual can learn a new form of behavior simply from the process of association. Or simply put according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Classical Conditioning occurs when two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response” (“Classical,” 2015, para.2). In order to better understand Classical Conditioning, it is important to first define several key terms. A stimulus is any feature of the environment that affects behavior. A response is the behavior elicited by the stimulus (“Stimulus,” 2015, para.1).

First of all, I would like to begin by describing my experience of learning to fear roller coasters, with regards to classical conditioning. To give some context to the situation, I was a brave girl wanting to tame a structure much larger than herself because I had the belief that I was invincible. I strongly believe that my fear of roller coasters can be explained using Pavlov’s “classical conditioning.” Classical conditioning is the type of learning that occurs via making associations. In other words, classical conditioning is a type of learning by which a natural stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response (Feist, 2008, p.449).

Classical conditioning was discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov 1902. Classical conditioning suggests that all behaviour is learnt through association. Pavlov discovered this through his works with dogs. It was also believed that classical conditioning can lead to the development of phobias. This was demonstrated by Watson and Rayner 1920 with the case of little Albert (gross p162).

Allison has experienced a few panic attacks in her life, but has not had a panic attack in more than two years. But she still carries Xanax with her everywhere she goes, just in case she needs it. Ever since she was 7 years old, she has worried about random issues. Allison remembers walking through her house at 7 years old, checking on all of the appliances to make sure that they were all unplugged before everyone fell asleep in fear that a fire would break out and burn the house down. Allison was also worried as a 3rd grader about her mother dying any day from cancer, since her mother was a smoker. When Allison was 16, she had great difficulty with learning how to drive in fear that she would be involved in a car accident. Indeed, Allison was involved in 2 car accidents, none of which were her fault.

Within anxiety you are have the same process going on, an association of beliefs and responding emotions however within anxiety the 'danger' tends to be a response to 'past experiences, or.perceived experiences' rather than real life ones. Even within the real life experience the emotions within anxiety are distorted to include more fear than appropriate.