Psychology
Anxiety disorders are occurrences in our human life today. They can affect everyone in the society, and its effects are extensive in the society as well. There are several factors that play a significant role in the existent and development of anxiety disorders among human beings (WITTCHEN, STEIN, & KESSLER, 2009, p. 13). One of the elemental factors that relate to anxiety disorders is biological preparedness. The anxiety disorder presented includes fears and phobias towards different aspects in the environment.
Graham explains the uneven distribution of the fears through various evolutionary and mechanistic explanations. Psychological or behavioral mechanisms explain the behavioral phenomena of anxiety disorders.
Biological preparedness is a concept that accounts for the uneven distribution of anxiety disorders including phobias and fears. From this article, the ease with which the learned associations aw formed depends on the biological predispositions shaped by the existent specialized evolutionary theories. Under biological preparedness, relevant phenomena of human fears and phobia appear to be capable of becoming learned in a single trial, irrational, resistant to extinction and selective.
On the other hand, in Susan Mineka and Arne Ohman’s article on the non-associative and associative factors of the etiology of phobias, behavioral preparedness surfaces in the concept of developmental fears with phobias (Öhman & Mineka, 2001, p. 14). That is; the article presents the issue of behavioral preparedness as an associative pathway to the acquisition of fears or phobias.
Moreover, Susan and Arne’s article on fears, phobias and preparedness, organisms or human beings tend to b conservative of their handling of potentially fatal occurrences or situations (Mineka & Öhman, 2002, p. 11). As such prepared associations that are relative to the non-prepared associations have to be more resistant to extinctions.
Al the three articles present elemental information that relate to the theory of fear acquisition. The implication of these theories is that intense fear among organisms can originate from Pavlovian conditioning, evolutionary necessities of survival contingencies and the conceptual empirical fact that fears or phobias occur primarily to stimuli, which are survival relevant in the existent evolutionary experience.
I think that a phobia and other forms of anxiety disorders are innate. They are innate or instinctive because the surrounding or environment plays an important role in the existence of these anxiety disorders. For instance, factors in the environment such as height, strangers and separation among others are the causative agents of these phobias (Bourne, 2005, p. 11). Therefore, the existence of the anxiety disorders depends entirely on the situation of the current environment.
On the other hand, some forms of anxiety disorders like developmental fears can be learned. From Mineka and Ohman’s article, the stimuli that evoke these kinds of disorders constitute of minority adult phobias that might include illnesses or animals and might often are outgrown.
References
Bourne, E. J. (2005). The anxiety & phobia workbook. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
Brosch, T., & Sharma, D. (2005). The Role of Fear-Relevant Stimuli in Visual Search: A Comparison of Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Stimuli. Emotion. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.5.3.360
Davey, G. C. (1995). Preparedness and phobias: Specific evolved associations or a generalized expectancy bias? Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00038498
Mineka, S., & Öhman, A. (2002). Born to fear: non-associative vs associative factors in the etiology of phobias. Behaviour Research and Therapy. doi:10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00050-X
WITTCHEN, H., STEIN, M. B., & KESSLER, R. C. (2009). Social fears and social phobia in a community sample of adolescents and young adults: prevalence, risk factors and co-morbidity. Psychological Medicine. doi:10.1017/S0033291798008174
Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.108.3.483
