Preparedness and Phobias

Preparedness Theory and Phobia

Phobia is believed to be based on a real situation that remains fixated in human mind creating emotional dis . According to Marc (1989 ) Fear is an evolutionary legacy that leads an organism to avoid threat Fear is one of the strongest emotional reactions along with subjective feeling of unpleasantness urging to run away from the undesirable object . This basic human emotion is a reaction toward a specific dangerous situation . It is an essence of survival attempt to avoid a threatening situation

There are three main classes

of phobias agoraphobia , social phobia , and specific phobia . The agoraphobics are associated with intense fear of in situation where normally escape is not possible . One of the categories includes fear of animal that range from mild phobia to extreme phobia . A few animal phobias include fearing animals , such as snakes , spiders , ants , birds etc

For example Arachnophobia is related to spider fear or scorpion . Often the reaction of people suffering from Arachnophobia has sudden reaction that seems irrational to others , but looks real for these people . People with arachnophobia often feel uneasy in a situation where they find some visible sign of the animals they fear and often end up in panic Similarly the fear of snake Ophidiophobia refers to the fear of snake The fear of snake is most commonplace where people either fear them due to venom or inherent danger in snakes

According to the Freudian school of fear , the cause of Ophidiophobia is normal some incident in childhood or in other cases it is incarnation of evil which is often rein enforced through media or religion or both Psychologists believe fear is basically evolutionary . According to the evolutionary psychology the presence of snakes viper and spiders have been in human mind due to the presence of fears among our ancestors from these animals

Some fears may be culturally acquired as Freud mentions however cultures differ in their transmition of knowledge about the diseases and dangers or taboos related to animals or food or natural phenomenon . For example phobias related to somatic complaints are common among the African tribes however when it comes to animal fear , such phobia is found universal regardless of culture and race ( Kirmayer , 1991

Pavlov 's Classical Conditioning theory (1927 ) proposed that fear is learnt acquired by conditioning process . In his experiment , Pavlov gave certain condition to a dog . Naturally , dogs salivate to food . Food , as a biologically significant stimulus (Unconditional Stimulus , short as UCS , paired with sound of a bell (neutral stimulus . After being repeatedly paired and given to the dog , even without the presence of the UCS , the bell 's sound , now called as Conditioning Stimulus (CS ) evoked the original response salivate to foods . When the new condition is finally learnt , the response called the Conditioned Response (CR . In the case of fear conditioning , the neutral stimulus paired with certain threatening stimulus . As a result , the neutral stimulus , which became CS , has the neutrals stimulus ' effect towards the subject

According to...