Theories Affecting Anna's Fear Of Snakes

Specific phobia, also known as simple phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent and unreasonable fear of something or fear of a situation, wherein such fear is not proportionate to the danger or risk of that thing or situation that a person has the fear of. The five sub-type of specific phobia are the animal, natural environment, blood injection injury, situational and others. The most common specific phobia is the animal phobia. Examples of this animal phobia include fear of dogs, snakes, insects or mice. To prevent over diagnosis of specific phobia, DSM 5 have made several changes based on the over assessment of danger or erratic fear. To be considered as one of the specific phobias, it should meet the requirements

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.

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

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.

not have a fear of something, whether it may be a fear of heights or snakes.

“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

Can’t Get Away On your way back in the house feel something following you so you turned around to identify what it is nothing is there. You keep on walking all the sudden you felt the presence of this body getting closer you turn around one last time, there it is out of nowhere you realize gigantic girth as a telephone pole chasing after you weighing up to 200 pounds and it is nearly 20 feet long. As a child were always curious about happening we don’t know, however this constrictors creature is after you there is no need to stop asking why am I being chased your just running for life as quick as you can. There you are on a swing just admiring a fiery red orb of light slowly sinking beneath the horizon, and threads of light lingered in the

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

Moreover, the research findings discussed in the article “Detecting the snake in the grass: Attention to fear‐relevant stimuli by adults and young children” by authors Vanessa LoBue and Judy S. DeLoache relate to human subject research because it is an observational study using both children and adults as participants. Data was collected on the children and adults’

In 1903 a Russian physiologist by the name of Ivan Pavlov first developed an experiential model of learning called Classical Conditioning (Lautenheiser 1999). An example if Classical Conditioning would be ringing a bell when it is time for your pet to eat. The pet hears the bell and over time is conditioned that when the bell rings its dinner time thus begins to salivate, and eventually learns to be conditioned to responding to the bell in a specific manner. The bases was that neutral stimulus would be put together with an excitatory one and over time the neutral stimulus would, at some point down the line elicit the response that was associated with the original unlearned response. Pavlov later added an element known as the nonexcitatory, conditioned stimulus which is but together with an unconditioned stimulus (Lautenheiser 1999).

For example if a child sees its mother reacting in a fearful way towards a spider they too will react in that particular way. Evidence for this comes from Bandura who observed the reactions of fake electrical shocks been given with a buzzer. Maneeka found that when mothers reacted to snakes in a bad way the child developed a phobia of snakes in later life. There are demand characteristics with this research, as the researchers will be expecting a particular outcome and the people may already have a fear of a particular object or situation. Also the outcomes cannot be applied to every phobia i.e. claustrophobia therefore it is limited.

The client would decrease the stress levels and see the phobia in a less aggressive way. Instead of awfulizing the client would use their positive thinking to move through the irrational beliefs. This technique will be applied during the introduction to the snake within the same room. Perhaps making light-hearted conversation, just as the therapist in the video did about the naming of the snake, instead of how it’s scary. That allows the client to identify and eliminate it as a threating object.

* Ivan Pavlov (behaviorist) – Started the idea of conditioning, where an inherited reflex comes to be triggered by a stimulus that has nothing to do with that reflex. He showed that even inherited reflexes could be influenced dramatically by learning experiences.

I'm leaning more to instincts rather than inherit memories. It is true that it is our innate that we should fear snakes. I am scared of pretty much everything that's not human, but my mother and father are not. So I'm still not convince that it is our inherit memories that I learn to fear pretty much

Phobia is described as a strong, irrational fear and avoidance of objects or situations that are usually considered harmless (Huffman, 485). Phobic disorders can be categorized into three categories: agoraphobia, specific phobias, and social phobias. In this paper I will be talking about a specific phobia called arachnophobia and how it affects my cousin whom is suffering from this phobia.