Phobias In Evolutionary Psychology

A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of something. Many phobias are in relation to one another. As people, we must realize that phobias cannot be fixed by ourselves. In order to help individuals that we may encounter, we must completely understand phobias. We cannot judge them for something they cannot help. To help an individual feel more at ease it is our job to know the causes, effects, impacts, and treatments of their phobia. This would help to completely understand the phobia and in the end, help us all to support each

Known as a mental disorder a phobia is a persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to compelling desire to avoid it. Phobias tend to affect the way people live their lives, for example, their working and social environments, considering that they last for a very long time and are capable to cause intense psychological physical stress. It is considered today the most common mental and anxiety disorder in the United States (Matig Mavissakalian & David H. Barlow 1981 pp 2). There are many phobias such as: the fear of aging, fear of changing, fear of clowns, fear of getting fat, fear of being in closed spaces, etc.

Do you want to know how to face and conquer your fear or phobia? According to Fears

The biological explanation for the acquisition of phobic disorders establishes that phobias are caused by genetics, innate influences and the principles of biochemistry. This theory recognizes that an oversensitive fear response may be inherited, causing abnormal levels of anxiety. This is illustrated in the basis of inheritance, particularly the adrenergic theory that convicts that those who have an acquisition to phobic disorders consequently show high levels of arousal in the automatic nervous system, which leads to increased amounts of adrenaline, thus causing high levels of anxiety.

“While biological factors certainly increase the vulnerability to developing fear and phobia, findings have not yet confirmed that these behaviors are controlled by biological mechanisms” (Rofé). Treating and understanding, psychoanalysis, phobias are believed to be a defense mechanism against trauma that might have been brought up as child. It still debated wether phobias are biological or created through life experiences. Due to varied experiments and evaluation, stating phobias derive from young childhood traumas would be untruthful and not factual. In the theory of psychoanalytic fear and phobias are created if the child remembers the experience which have brought

Introduction: Almost everyone has an irrational fear or two—of mice, for example, or your annual dental checkup. For most people, these fears are minor. But when fears become so severe that they cause tremendous anxiety and interfere with your normal life, they’re called phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything. Most phobias develop in childhood, but they can also develop in adults. If you

A researcher named Burrhus Frederic Skinner thought he would develop the idea of operant conditioning. He suggested than we act in regard to consequences (reward or punishment) in which we actively learn. He suggested there are 3 types of these consequences of behavior; positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement is receiving a reward for acting in a certain way. An example of this could be getting a school prize for performing well in your exams, because of the reinforcement of the prize, the student will try to perform well every time. Negative reinforcement occurs when we act in a way that avoids an unpleasant consequence (e.g. not being late to a meeting because you do not want to be perceived as rude). Punishment is an unpleasant consequence that comes from the way we act. For example, gaining a detention for arriving late to lessons. Punishment decreases like probability that behaviour is likely to be repeated. Whereas, in positive and negative reinforcement the chances are you will repeat the behaviour. Skinner’s conducted research in the form of a lab experiment. He used a hungry rat that was placed in a cage that had been especially developed for the purpose of the study and was named Skinner’s box. In the cage was a button and a food dispenser. When the rat pressed the button food would appear in the dispenser. The animal soon learned that

It is as the result of our mind, that we are able to form mechanisms that can help us abandon the predestined fears ingrained within us, however, with these abilities comes

Phobias are a form of anxiety and a heightened sense of fear. Like fear, but times two or ten depending on how bad it is. There are several different forms of extreme anxiety, but the most common types of phobia is simple and social. These categories consist of phobias that involve objects, insects, or situations

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) is an approach to psychology that adds on knowledge and principles of evolutionary biology has to offer by researching the structure of the mind. The aim of EP is on the evolving matter of information-processing mechanisms that are compiled by the human mind, supplying the important connections between evolutionary biology and complexity, irreducible social, as well as, the cultural phenomena studied by historians, economists, anthropologists and sociologists. This is an area of which the way we think about psychology that can be applied to various topics.

As mentioned previously in Jeeves and Brown’s book, the field of evolutionary psychology is one of two divisions within neuroscience receiving a lot of attention for its cutting edge research and controversial conclusions. At the beginning of chapter 6, the authors reference evolutionary psychology’s growing popularity, citing particular news articles in prevalent magazines such as Times and Der Spiegel. However, these snippets of debated discoveries in evolutionary psychology should be interpreted with a keen eye. With so much hype and excitement surrounding the field, the scientific basis of evolutionary psychology becomes, at times, distorted. Thus, Jeeves and Brown discuss the true scientific roots of evolutionary psychology in chapter

In general, a phobia refers to “extreme [and] irrational fear reactions” (Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk, 2013, p. 190). Phobias are developed through a process called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning involves “a process in which one stimulus that does not elicit a certain response is associated with a second stimulus that does; as a result, the first stimulus also comes to elicit a response” (Powell et al., 2013, pp. 109-110).

My fear of has been with me since I was small, from my mother snatching me away from her own personal fear it became a part of me. I am afraid of dogs. They are creatures that just frighten me, no matter what breed or how their owners say “they aren’t going to bite”, dogs are just animals I can’t put my trust in. cynophobia; the abnormal fear of dogs. I will run, jump, climb, or do anything I have to do to get away from them, even being in the same room with them is a very big accomplishment for me. I try not to think about them when their near but it still goes through my mind that I’m not completely safe. Being afraid of dogs has personal affected me, because when I’m out or when I go over someone’s house I have to ask before I come, “Do

Purpose: At the end of my speech, the audience will know how phobias affect people and how to overcome their phobia.

However, phobia can even cause people to risk their health. For example, the fear of dentists can leave people suffering from it willing to risk the health of their teeth in order to avoid having to go through an exam or procedure ( MacKay). When one knows about an upcoming confrontation, it can be the reason why one can not sleep or finds it hard to focus on important tasks. Due the change in daily routine, this unrealistic fear can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by and object, event or situation. But even animals have anxieties and phobias just as every human being (www.phobia-help.de). A phobia is an irrational fear, one knows that the object or situation, one is scared off, can not hurt one, but one is still afraid. A reason for this is that the human mind can not distinguish what is real and imaginary. When one has uncontrollable anxiety attacks, he loses rational judgement, leading to complicated problems. However, anyone can develop a phobia, men and women, teens and young adults, and elderly lady or a one-year-old boy (MacKay).