PSYCH 120 Abnormal Psychology Study Guide 2 CHEAT SHEET

Different types of phobias varies widely, animal phobias usually begin in childhood as do blood injection injury phobias, and dental

phobias. Claustrophobia and driving tend to begin in adolescence or early adulthood. In children, the fear or anxiety of phobia may be

expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or clinging. animal phobias usually begin in childhood as do blood injection injury phobias,

causes (by theory): psychological causal factors: psychoanalytic viewpoint: phobias represent a defense against anxiety that stems

from repressed impulses from the id; because it is too dangerous to know the repressed id impulse, the anxiety is displaced onto some

external object or situation that has some symbolic relationship to the real object of anxiety, learned behavior: account based on

learning theory which explains through classical conditioning, the fear response can be readily conditioned to previously neutral stimuli

(claustrophobia because she was locked in closets as a child). 85% of people cite traumatic conditioning experiences as the source of

their phobia, some can be un-cued panic attacks (had an attack in a restaurant, now scared of restaurants), vicarious conditioning:

simply watching a phobic person behaving fearful with his or her phobic object can result in fear being transmitted (boy watched grandpa

die while vomiting, now has fear of vomiting), individual differences in learning: the differences in life experiences among individuals

strongly affects whether or not conditioned fears or phobias will actually develop (years of experiences with friendly dogs and one bad

dog bite might not develop into a phobia). But some life experiences may serve as risk factors and make certain people more vulnerable

to phobias than others and other experiences may protect against the development of a phobia. Events that occur during conditioning

experience are also important. might not gain a phobia against dogs if you could escape the room you were in when he was biting you,

as opposed to being in a locked room where you couldn't escape you might gain more of a phobia. Inflation effect suggests that a

person who acquired a mild fear of driving after a small cash might be expected to develop a full blown phobia if he was later physically

assaulted, even though no automobile was present during this incident. Verbal information can also alter and inflate level of fear (if

someone says “you’re lucky to be alive because the man who crashed into you lost his license due to a record of driving drunk and fatal

car accidents”). Cognitions and thoughts might maintain our phobias because we are constantly alert and directing attention towards

the object as opposed to leaving it out of sight out of mind, evolutionary preparedness for learning certain fears and phobias:

people are much more likely to have phobias of snakes and water heights, than of motorcycles and guns. This is because of our