1.6 Problem 1
Just Scared?
Fear and Anxiety Response Patterns
Anxiety- general feeling of apprehension about possible future dangers
Unpleasant emotions and cognitions
No flight-or-fight response, but preparation for the response
Helps us prepare for possible threat
Anxiety:
1. Cognitive: negative mood, concern about possible future threats/dangers, self-
preoccupation, sense of unable to predict future threat
2. Physiological: state of tension/chronic overarousal
3. Behavioural: potential strong tendency to avoid situation where might encounter danger
- Moderate degrees, anxiety helps learning and performance
o Chronic/severe= maladaptive, diagnosed with anxiety disorders
- associated with increased prevalence of: asthma, chronic pain, hypertension, arthritis,
CVD, irritable bowel syndrome
Fear- alarm reaction that occurs in response to immediate dangers, involving the activation of
“fight-or-flight” response
Automatic Nervous System
Instantaneous reaction
Helps us run from threat
Panic attack- fear response occurring in absence of any obvious external danger
Fear/Panic:
1. Cognitive/subjective components (“I feel afraid”)
2. Physiological components (Increased heart rate/heavy breathing)
3. Behavioural components (strong urge to escape/flee)
Basic fear/anxiety response patterns v. conditionable:
Neutral/novel stimulus + frightening/unpleasant events = elicits fear/anxiety themselves
(unconditioned stimuli) + conditioned
stimulus = conditioned response
This conditioning is normal and adaptive process, that allows us to learn to anticipate
upcoming frightening events
X – can lead to development of clinically significant fears/anxieties
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety disorders: disorders that have unrealistic, irrational fears/anxieties of disabling intensity
as their principal and most obvious manifestation
Many with one anxiety disorder will experience and least one more/depression at point in
their lives
Increased vulnerability:
o Perceptions of lack of control over environment or own emotions, more vulnerable to
developing anxiety disorders
Depend on social environment raised in
o Faulty or distorted patterns of cognition
o Sociocultural environment
Phobias
Just Scared?
Fear and Anxiety Response Patterns
Anxiety- general feeling of apprehension about possible future dangers
Unpleasant emotions and cognitions
No flight-or-fight response, but preparation for the response
Helps us prepare for possible threat
Anxiety:
1. Cognitive: negative mood, concern about possible future threats/dangers, self-
preoccupation, sense of unable to predict future threat
2. Physiological: state of tension/chronic overarousal
3. Behavioural: potential strong tendency to avoid situation where might encounter danger
- Moderate degrees, anxiety helps learning and performance
o Chronic/severe= maladaptive, diagnosed with anxiety disorders
- associated with increased prevalence of: asthma, chronic pain, hypertension, arthritis,
CVD, irritable bowel syndrome
Fear- alarm reaction that occurs in response to immediate dangers, involving the activation of
“fight-or-flight” response
Automatic Nervous System
Instantaneous reaction
Helps us run from threat
Panic attack- fear response occurring in absence of any obvious external danger
Fear/Panic:
1. Cognitive/subjective components (“I feel afraid”)
2. Physiological components (Increased heart rate/heavy breathing)
3. Behavioural components (strong urge to escape/flee)
Basic fear/anxiety response patterns v. conditionable:
Neutral/novel stimulus + frightening/unpleasant events = elicits fear/anxiety themselves
(unconditioned stimuli) + conditioned
stimulus = conditioned response
This conditioning is normal and adaptive process, that allows us to learn to anticipate
upcoming frightening events
X – can lead to development of clinically significant fears/anxieties
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety disorders: disorders that have unrealistic, irrational fears/anxieties of disabling intensity
as their principal and most obvious manifestation
Many with one anxiety disorder will experience and least one more/depression at point in
their lives
Increased vulnerability:
o Perceptions of lack of control over environment or own emotions, more vulnerable to
developing anxiety disorders
Depend on social environment raised in
o Faulty or distorted patterns of cognition
o Sociocultural environment
Phobias
