However, there are alternative explanations to why people develop phobias.
The behaviourist theory suggests that phobias are learnt through classical conditioning, operant conditioning or observational learning. A study by Watson and Rayner who observed an 11-month-old baby named Little Albert. They introduced him to a white, fluffy rat, and Little Albert showed no signs of fear towards it. The researchers then introduced a loud bang when he was playing with the rat. Thus, he began to associate the loud bang with the white rat, and consequently, he developed a phobia.
Another explanation for the development of phobias is the cognitive explanation, which suggests phobias are a result of faulty thinking. This is a controversial explanation as it suggests that the sufferer is to blame for their illness, which is often not the case. They argue that people with phobias tend to think about negative aspects of situations, for example, if they have experienced a negative experience they will then avoid it because they assume it will recur in the future. Thus, phobias are made worse by the way people worry about situations they are going to be faced with this may lead to catastrophising where phobics tend to imagine the worst possible scenarios whilst ignoring the possible positive outcomes of events they may face.
In addition, phobics often misinterpret their own physical sensations; for example, an increase in their heart rate might be misinterpreted for a heart attack.
Schimdt’s supports this with his study using recruits to the US Air Force Academy. These recruits went through gruelling basic training, and Schmidt assessed the cognitive tendency to respond anxiously to one’s own bodily sensations. Schmidt concluded that those recruits who were more sensitive to their own physical feelings at the start of their training were more likely than those who didn’t to experience panic attacks later.
However, to my knowledge Schmidt did not meet the recruits after his research therefore we do not know if those who were more sensitive to their own bodily sensations did suffer panic attacks after their basic training. Thus we cannot say if Schmidt’s research is supportive of the cognitive explanation for phobias.
The researcher has decided to study this topic as the researcher has a phobia themselves, and therefore would like to investigate why people develop phobias.
AIMS AND HYPOTHESIS
The researcher has decided to study this topic as the researcher has a phobia themselves, and therefore would like to investigate why people develop phobias.
The aim of the researcher’s study is to discover if there is a correlation between the perceived ugliness of different creatures and a person’s fear of them.
Hypothesis
There is a significant positive correlation between fear of and ugliness of the creatures
Null Hypothesis
There is no significant correlation between fear of and ugliness of the creatures and any observed difference is due to chance alone.
The researcher has selected a directional or one-tailed hypothesis because it is precise, and that past research supports my chosen hypothesis.
The desired level of significance is 0.05 because this will mean that we can be ninety-five per cent that the results did not occur by chance, and thus, the researcher can be sure that their results are significant.
METHOD
A non-experimental procedure, in particular a survey was used to measure subjects’ fearfulness of the researcher’s listed creatures. This was used, as it is the most straightforward way to compare perceptual ugliness of creatures and the fear experienced towards them.
A strength of using a survey or questionnaire is that it is quick and easy to produce and fill in and also a large amount of information can be gathered from a number of participants. However, there are limitations of using questionnaires or surveys, for example, there is no guarantee that the participants are telling the truth because of embarrassment.
The first part of the questionnaire was based on the participants’ fear of animals. Ten animals were listed, and a rating scale was used from 1 to 10 where:
1 = Not afraid at all
10 = Very afraid
The second part of the questionnaire, participants’ were required to rate how fearful they are of that creatures’ ugliness, the same scale was used as the previous question. For an example of a questionnaire – see appendix 1.
The researcher used a repeated measures design because the researcher wanted to investigate if a person’s perceptual fear is influenced by the animal’s appearance. Thus, if the researcher used an independent measures design one participant may really fear a creature, however, the other participant doing the other condition may not fear the same creature, and thus may not think it was ugly, therefore, this would make the results biased.
An advantage of a using a repeated measures design is that individual differences between participants are removed as a potential confounding variable. Also, using a repeated measures design requires fewer participants, since data for all conditions are gained from the same group of subjects. However, there are disadvantages from using a repeated measures design, for example, order effects are more likely to occur because participants are participating in more than one experimental condition, therefore, participants may become bored or tired.
Due to the fact that this is a correlational study, there is no independent variable being manipulated. The co-variables are the ugliness of a creature and the fear rating of a creature. The possible confounding variables are the potential disruptions, for example, other people in the room, noise, and so on. Therefore, tom counter these confounding variables the researcher used an empty room and placed a note on the door asking to be not disturbed.
The researcher had to abide by the British Psychological Society rules about ethical considerations. Before the researcher had started the study, they made sure that no subject has a phobia otherwise by doing this survey with a phobia means you may be putting them under undue emotional distress, especially since the researcher is using pictures of the creatures listed on the survey. Thus, the researcher asked all participants if they had a phobia before proceeding with the study. The researcher also considered whether any of the participants would become distressed, therefore, the researcher told all of the participants beforehand that they could withdraw from the survey at any time. In addition, participants may feel embarrassed of their answers to their survey, thus which could result in deceit, therefore, all participants were made aware that all answers were going to remain confidential and anonymous.
Participants
Ten participants were chosen, the researcher, did not think this was a sufficient number but at the time of carrying out the study, few people were available. Also, a disadvantage of using ten participants is that it is a small sample size, which could therefore lead to biases and also is not representative of the general population.
The researcher selected participants by using an opportunity sample because, although it is not the best type of sample to use (because it may lead to biases and does not represent the general population), it poses less of a problem than random sampling. Although random sampling is statistically the best sampling method to use, means unless precautions are taken, random sampling can lead to a high-level of non-response, which as a result leads to a self-selected sample, which would be less representative than an opportunity or systematic sampling. Opportunity sampling means accessing participants who are immediately available, which in addition is less time consuming.
The participants to be assessed are unfortunately are from a target population, who are students aged between 16 and 18, participants were also made up of 5 males and 5 females, from a Sixth Form at a school where the research also took place, which is therefore, biased, because as already mentioned is not representative of the general population. This meant that the researcher is looking at a specific age group from approximately 16 to 18 years old.
Procedures
The study is proven to be easy replicated, as this study is based on Bennett-Levy and Marteau’s study. However, it has been adapted for this study. On the questionnaires were standardised instructions to remove any researcher effects, and participants were fully debriefed afterwards. This was the procedure of the study:
- Ten participants were selected using an opportunity sample, and were given a questionnaire with standardised instructions. The participants were asked to complete the questionnaire based on the listed creatures ugliness and how fearful they are of that creature
- After the researcher has collected data from the ten subjects, a mean score will be calculated for each of the ten animals from the scales given by the ten subjects.
- Due to the fact that the researcher has inferential data the researcher will be using Spearman’s Rho on the data. The reason for that is because the researcher is using a repeated measures design and ordinal level data, and also because the data is co-related and therefore need to use a non-parametric test.
RESULTS
The table to show the mean ratings complied from both sections of the questionnaire based on the perceptual ugliness and fear of animals can be found in the appendix. The mean scores were derived from the scores given by the ten participants in the two sections of the questionnaire on the extent to which they felt they feared the ten animals listed, and in addition how they felt they feared the animals’ ugliness.
In order to test the significance of the results and find out if a positive correlation is present, an appropriate statistical test has to be selected. Therefore, I used Spearman’s Rank Correlation because the researcher is using a repeated measures design and ordinal level data and that the data is co-related. See appendix for full working of data.
From the results we can see there is a significant correlation between fear and the perceptual appearance of the creatures’. I used a 0.05 level of significance because we can be ninety-five per cent sure that the results did not occur by chance. The results in this study is that Rs = 0.95, and therefore, the results are significant.
The next page shows the scattergram, which relates to the collected data. In the opinion of the researcher, the scattergram shows a strong positive correlation, however, it is not a perfect one. The data is nearly in a straight line, thus a line of best fit could be calculated.
Earlier in this report, the researcher stated that the hypothesis is directional which means that the researcher thought that the results would show a positive correlation between fearfulness of the animals’ and their ugliness. Thus, the researcher can accept their hypothesis and reject their null hypothesis.
DISCUSSION
The aim of the study was to establish if there is a positive correlation between the perceived ugliness of different creatures and a person’s fear of them. In this study Rs = 0.95, which is significant and suggests that there may be a link between the perceived ugliness of some creatures and a person’s fear toward them.
After carrying out the appropriate statistical analysis of the results, the researcher has been able to reach certain conclusions. Above all it can be seen that there is a clear relationship between fear and the ugliness of an animal. This finding can be seen to assume that the null hypothesis, which stated that: “There will be no significant correlation between fearfulness and ugliness and that any observed difference is due to chance alone” can be seen to be not in accordance with the findings, and therefore, the null hypothesis can be discarded. Thus, the researcher can accept the hypothesis, which stated: “There will be a positive correlation between the fearfulness and the ugliness of the animals.”
From the results, it shows that the relationship between fear and the ugliness of the animals listed are very significant, thus, supporting the original study conducted by Bennett-Levy and Marteau. According to Bennett-Levy and Marteau, the correlation between fear and ugliness was 0.82, where mine was 0.95; therefore, it is safe to say that this study supports Bennett-Levy and Marteau’s research.
In addition, when the participants commented upon why they had chosen the highest rating for the fear of certain animals, they often referred to visual aspects of the animals’ appearance, for example, one participant said they feared spiders because “they are ugly and have many legs.” Thus, this further supports the study and also supports the concept by Schneirla (1965) known as the Averse Stimulus Configurations.
A problem with this research is that
In addition, the questionnaire may not have been provocative enough, and thus, it may be beneficial to ask participants to hold the animals and to observe their reaction. However, this might be ethically unjustifiable because should a subject suffer from an acute phobia this may lead to extreme anxiety.
Another alternative would be to examine the sex difference in terms of fear of animals. This was also carried out by Bennett-Levy and Marteau, who found that certain variations were evident between the sexes. This found, for example, that females rated themselves less willing to approach ten of the animals than males.
Conclusion
To conclude this study, I established that there was a significant correlation between the perceptual ugliness of animals and the fear experienced towards them. The null hypothesis was rejected at a significance level of 0.05.
Thus, the results of the study were in accordance with that of the original study.
REFERENCES
- Bennett-Levy and Marteau (1984): Fear of animals: What is prepared?
British Journal of Psychology, 75, pp. 37 – 42
Key Studies in Psychology p. 151 – 160
Richard D Gross
Hodder and Stoughton (1990)
Michael W. Eysenck and Cara Flanagan
Phobias, p. 646 - 655
Psychology Press (2001)
Mike Cardwell, Liz Clark and Claire Meldrum
Preparedness, pp, 543, 633
Collins Second Edition (2000)
Key Studies in Psychology, p. 151
Richard D Gross
Hodder and Stoughton (1990)
