Fear+and+Anxiety

Chapter 7: Fear and Anxiety

-- experience in which the dread is directed toward a specific object or event > -- proposal that people and other animals are evolutionarily predisposed to learn some things, including fear, more easily than others
 * Fear – a response to a perceived danger which subsides quickly when the threat is gone
 * Anxiety – general expectation that “something bad might happen” without identifying any particular danger
 * The vast majority of our fears are learned (except for loud noises and separation from loved ones)
 * Watson – Little Albert experiment – every time Little Albert saw a white rat, Watson made a loud noise which frightened him, after a few trials Albert was afraid of the rat
 * Preparedness – built in disposition to learn some things faster than others
 * People often develop fear or phobias of things that are unpredictable, uncontrollable and seldom experienced in a safe context
 * People often describe fear arousing situations as unexpected, unpleasant, externally caused, uncertain and uncontrollable

Behavioral Measures of Fear and Anxiety
 * Facial expression of fear – lifting the inner and outer eyebrows, pulling them together; widening the eyes; and contracting the muscles below the corners of the lips, pulling the skin of the lower cheeks down and to the side
 * Micro expressions – involuntary, momentary expressions that contradict the intended impression of calmness
 * Startle response – muscles tense rapidly, especially the neck, eyes close tightly, shoulders quickly pull close to the neck and harms pull up toward the head
 * Startle potentiation – enhancement of the startle response in a frightening situation as compared to a safe one
 * Suppression of movement – this measure is often used with animals because they simply “freeze” when scared
 * Polygraph - measurements based on the assumption that people get nervous when they lie causing increased heart rate and blood pressure or other sympathetic nervous system activities
 * Emblems - hand and body gestures that have specific meanings within a given culture

The Biology of Fear and Anxiety
 * The sympathetic nervous system is activated in fearful situations
 * Frightened people have increased blood flow to the head in order to “wake up”, blood flow increases in the face as well
 * Frightened people also sweat
 * Hands and body gestures can also reveal fear and anxiety
 * Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) – neurological system that responds to a frightening situation by increasing attention while inhibiting action and decreasing heart rate
 * Each amygdale receives input representing vision, hearing, other senses, and pain and is connected with a hippocampus (memory), so it can associate various stimuli with dangerous outcomes that follow them
 * An amygdale activation may also be necessary for another aspect of fear responding, such as a danger response.
 * A woman with damage to her amygdala did not feel fear and got into many dangerous situations because of it
 * People with social phobia show strong amygdala responses to the sight of an angry person
 * Drugs that relieve anxiety are known as anxiolytics or tranquilizers
 * The most popular of these drugs fall into the category known as benzodiazepines

Individual Differences in Fear and Anxiety
 * Women are more likely to report fear and anxiety than men do
 * Men and women are about equal in social phobia, claustrophobia and fear of injury
 * There seems to be genetics involved in developing anxiety
 * Our emotions, fear and anxiety, influence our thinking in all aspects of life

"Fear, Anger, and Risk"--Lerner & Keltner -if angry you have more approach and optimism about taking risks--this is related to your Behavioral Activation System ( approaching something and actively engaged in it & we activate things we want and desire) - if fearful you have a pessimistic approach about the outcome so you are likely to avoid risk because you weigh the risks more heavily & you assess risk in a pessimistic way (risk-averse)--this is related to your Behavioral Inhibition System (activation increases attention while inhibiting action and decreasing heart rate which decreases the attention to yourself =, what's the best route for escape...chronic BIS activation my be responsible for "trait anxiety") -both anger and fear are reactions to when something poses a threat but anger is an APPROACH response (BAS) and fear is an AVOIDANT response (BIS)
 * found that fear and anger have opposite effects on risk perception
 * fearful people= pessimistic risk estimates & risk averse choices
 * angry people= optimistic risk estimates & risk-taking choices
 * 4 different studies were done to analyze the connections between fear, anger and risk
 * look at anger and fear in natural environment, experimentally induced behavior
 * study 4=appraisal and control=our appraisal will determine our emotion and mediate/intervene (appraise pessimistic-fear, appraise optimistic-angry)
 * going to be angry if we feel we have more control of the situation and more fearful if we feel we don't have much control