three distinctive components of emotion
- physiological - physiological component involves changes in the autonomic nervous system that result in respiratory, cardiovascular, and muscular changes in the body
- cognitive - includes alterations in consciousness (e.g., in attention levels) and specific thoughts a person may have while experiencing a particular emotion
behavioural - tend to be consequences of certain emotions. For example,
if Greg experiences a panic attack during his exam, he may feel compelled to leave the situation
Anxiety
Anxiety is an affective state whereby an individual feels threatened by the potential occurrence of a future negative event
fear
fear is a more “primitive” emotion and occurs in response to a real or perceived current threat. Therefore, fear is “present oriented” in the sense that this emotion involves a reaction to something that is believed to be threatening at the present moment.
“fight or flight” response
From an evolutionary perspective, fear is a very important emotion because of the behavioural response that it elicits.
This behavioural response is popularly known as the “fight or flight” response, so named because fear prompts a person (or organism) to either flee from a dangerous situation or stand and fight
Panic
Panic is very similar to fear. However, whereas fear is an emotional response to an objective, current, and identifiable threat, panic is an extreme fear
reaction that is triggered even though there is nothing to be afraid of (it is essentially a “false alarm”)
neurosis
Until 1980, anxiety disorders were classified together with the somatoform and dissociative disorders (see Chapter 6) under the heading of neurosis. In the eighteenth century, people who were not psychotic but who still had emotional problems were labelled “neurotic.”
- This term implied that the
cause was presumed to be due to a disturbance in the central
nervous system - Freud thought that anxiety occurs because defence mechanisms failed to repress painful memories, impulses, or thoughts.
Etiology: Neuroanatomy and neurotransmitters
- Begin with the registry of sensory information at the thalamus; this information is then sent to the amygdala.
- From the amygdala, information is sent to areas in the hypothalamus, and then through a midbrain area (the periaquaductal grey) to the brain stem and spinal cord.
- The brain stem and spinal cord connect with the various autonomic (e.g., increased heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature) and
behavioural (e.g., freezing or flight) output components that are involved in the expression of fear
Mowrer - two factor theory
Mowrer suggested that fears
develop through the process of classical conditioning and
are maintained through operant conditioning.
- In the first phase, a neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS)
becomes paired with an inherently negative stimulus (e.g., a frightening event, the unconditioned stimulus, or UCS). The individual later learns to lessen this anxiety by avoiding the
CS, a behaviour that is negatively reinforced through operant conditioning
vicarious learning
- to develop fears by
observing the reactions of other people - Some people also develop fears by hearing fear-relevant information
Cognitive factors - Beck
Beck proposed that people are afraid because of the biased perceptions that they have about the world, the future, and themselves. Anxious individuals often see the world as dangerous, the future as uncertain, and themselves
as ill-equipped to cope with life’s threats (Beck & Emery, 1985).
Individuals who are susceptible to anxiety often have core beliefs that they are helpless and vulnerable.
Interpersonal factors of anxiety
- Parents who are anxious themselves tend to interact with their children in ways that are less warm and positive, more critical and catastrophic, and
less granting of autonomy when compared to non-anxious parents. - Such parenting styles may foster beliefs of helplessness and uncontrollability in children that contribute to a general psychological vulnerability to anxiety
- Children who develop an “anxiousambivalent” attachment style learn to fear being abandoned by loved ones. This attachment style may develop from interactions with parents who are inconsistent in their
emotional caregiving toward the infant.
Panic attacks
Panic attacks involve a sudden rush of intense fear or discomfort during which an individual experiences a number of physiological and psychological symptoms
Agoraphobia
is anxiety about being in places or situations where an individual might find it difficult to escape
behavioural avoidance test (BAT)
In this test, patients are asked to enter situations that they would typically avoid. They provide a rating of their degree of anticipatory anxiety and the actual level of anxiety that they experience.
catastrophic misinterpretations
Cognitive theories focus on the idea that individuals with panic disorder experience catastrophic misinterpretations of their bodily sensations
- An individual with panic disorder, on the other hand, may quickly misinterpret these symptoms as a sign that something must be wrong (e.g.,
“I am going to have a heart attack”). - This reaction may then cause even more apprehension such that the person worries about additional symptoms. Although the intention is to
reduce these sensations, they paradoxically increase because
of the response of the autonomic nervous system (the fight or flight response) to real or perceived threat. - This process continues until the person feels out of control and experiences another panic attack (see Figure 5.1). People may then begin to avoid situations or bodily sensations that become associated with having panic attacks.
Anxiety sensitivity
Anxiety sensitivity has to do with the belief that the somatic symptoms related to anxiety will have negative consequences that extend beyond the panic episode itself.
alarm theory
As mentioned earlier, unexpected panic attacks are not uncommon in the general population. When a real
danger is present, a “true alarm” occurs and our bodies kick in an incredibly adaptive physiological response that
allows us to face the feared object or flee from the situation.
phobias
fears cause marked distress and significantly disrupt their daily
lives. When an individual’s fears are this extreme, we refer to them as specific phobias. Fears are adaptive reactions to threats in the environment, but phobias are excessive and
unreasonable fear reactions.
The DSM-5 outlines five specifiers of specific phobia:
- animal type
- natural environment type
- blood injection-injury type
- situational type
- other type (includes illness phobia)
- Having a phobia from one of these subtypes increases the probability of developing another phobia within the same category
equipotentiality premise
- One of the main criticisms of this
conditioning model is that it assumes that all neutral stimuli have an equal potential for becoming phobias - In other words, the chances of being afraid of a lamp and a snake are
presumed to be equal. However, it is not the case that people have phobias for pretty much everything; rather, a select number of stimuli seem to be consistently related to phobias.
nonassociative model
The nonassociative model proposes that the process of evolution has endowed humans to respond fearfully to a select group of stimuli (e.g., water,
heights, spiders), and thus no learning is necessary to develop these fears
- Evidence for nonassociative theories also comes from the finding that babies seem to be born with certain kinds
of “prewired” anxiety that is elicited at various developmental stages
biological preparedness
Seligman (1971) argued that there has to be more to their etiology than classical conditioning. He suggested that people are more likely to fear certain types of stimuli because
of biological preparedness
- Similar to the nonassociative model, it is believed that the process of natural selection has equipped humans with the predisposition to fear objects
and situations that represented threats to our species over the course of our evolutionary heritage. However, unlike the nonassociative model, associative learning is still necessary to develop a phobia.
Disgust sensitivity
Disgust sensitivity refers to the degree to which people are susceptible to being disgusted by a variety of stimuli such as certain bugs, types of food, and small animals
social anxiety disorder (social phobia)
a marked and persistent fear of social or performance-related situations. Often their anxiety focuses on the fear of acting in a way that will be humiliating or embarrassing. People with social anxiety have an underlying fear of being evaluated negatively and frequently worry about what others might be thinking about them.
