Thanks for your comment.  The commercial exploitation of anxiety is one of the very sad features of twentieth century development.

It’s also easy, in cases of this sort, to “bash” the parents and certainly there are more and less sensible ways of responding when our children express these kinds of fears and concerns.

A second way that a person might acquire an irrational fear is through a process known as classical conditioning. The paradigm example of this was an experiment conducted by Watson and Rayner in 1920. It was known by then that a sudden loud noise elicited a natural fear response from newborn babies. In other words, they didn’t have to learn this fear, it was built in, so to speak, in the newborn’s physical apparatus. What Watson and Rayner did was they took an 11-month-old baby named Albert. They established that he did produce a fear response to a loud noise, but did not show any fear response when presented with a white rat. They then presented the rat followed immediately by a loud sudden noise. They did this seven times. By that stage, the rat – by itself – elicited a fear response from the child. In ordinary language, the child developed a fear of the rat because it had been paired with a “natural” fear response. We don’t know what became of little Albert, but it is conceivable that he remained fearful of white rats indefinitely. The point is that people do develop irrational fears through accidental associations with “genuinely” fearful objects.

A third way that irrational fears can develop is through imitation or modeling. A good many people in our culture – especially females – express a fear of spiders. (I have actually heard Freudians say that it is a reaction against their fathers because both spiders and fathers have hairy legs!) My own position is that this particular fear is almost always modeled from the mother. The small baby encounters a spider and begins to approach curiously. Mother reacts strongly – “No, no” etc.. So the child develops a fear response towards the spider.

Another aspect of this whole matter is the question of individual differences. Several years ago I was in St. Louis, Missouri and I took the little train ride to the top of the St. Louis Arch. This is truly a technological wonder – over 600 feet high. From the observation windows at the top the view is spectacular. However, I could feel the structure swaying beneath my feet, and whilst I did not emit a full-blown fear response, I was definitely disconcerted and was happy to be back on terra firma. Other people in the arch at the time displayed no concern. Similar considerations apply to air travel, road traffic, etc.. Some people feel nervous, fearful, etc., others don’t. Undoubtedly there are genetic differences in native fearfulness, but most of the variability derives from our experience. If, for instance, I got a job as a guide on the St. Louis Arch, I would become desensitized to the movement and it would cease to be a source of concern for me. The reality, however, is that most of us shun the sources of our fear, and so the opportunities for desensitization are denied. In this way fears acquired in childhood can remain strong throughout life.

An additional factor in this area is the movies. Movies need a good story line, and they often show scenarios such as elevators falling, bridges collapsing, etc., to heighten the suspense value of the film. These stories then enter our collective consciousness and reinforce the normal anxieties and concerns that have developed in us over the years. In Victorian England there was a great deal of fear of premature burial. Various devices (bells, etc.) were patented and marketed to enable a revitalized “corpse” to signal his plight, and sitters were hired to stay by the grave for a number of weeks after burial to respond to the buried person’s signals. Today a morbid preoccupation with matters of this sort would undoubtedly qualify one for a DSM diagnosis.

The central theme of this blog is that these various phenomena are not illnesses. They are manifestations of normal human life unfolding in all its complexity and beauty.

Thanks for your comment and very insightful question. If I can be of further help, don’t hesitate to come back.

I agree with your post for the most part but I had one question for you. How would you explain the more irrational type of phobias that people have? Let’s say something like the fear of elevators. I guess you could say that it is a fear of an enclosed space which can be evolutionarily rational in some circumstances. Regardless, what do you have to say about a fear that someone has no rational basis for?

Thanks,
John