Why What You Fear May Not Be Real

Researchers Watson and Raynor wanted to test the idea that fear could be acquired through classical conditioning. Their subject was Little Albert, an eleven-month-old son of a female employee at the clinic. The child's mother knew nothing about the experiment. Watson and Raynor presented Albert with a white laboratory rat while sounding a loud noise. Little Albert soon associated the loud noise with the white rat and was conditioned to fear the rat. This fear was then generalised to other fluffy white objects such a Santa's beard and a sealskin coat.

Does this make any meaning to you? Why do some kids fear the dark, mice, cockroaches? Because they were conditioned by the elders (usually their mums or sisters!) to fear these things. Psychology calls it classical conditioning. Those things that you fear, how did you know to fear them? The horned devil, spirits in graveyards, failures and other nonsense! You were taught or conditioned to fear most things - directly or indirectly.

Fear is a mighty stronghold, that if not dealt with will most likely cause a severe drawback. How? When you are faced with your greatest nightmare, what is your first reaction? Run towards it? Most likely not (most times fear causes you to draw back or recede). 

But thankfully, some of the things feared are not real; they are like shadows - intangible and so cannot cause real harm. Sometimes, these fears are outgrown but in other cases, the fear could grow and become a phobia - a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation the affected person will go to great lengths to avoid.

When ordinary fear of an object or situation becomes a phobia, then we have reason to fear!