Kilpatrick 1

Alison Kilpatrick

Professor Dean Leonard

English 1201

20 March 2022

Why do we have phobias?

Everyone has fears. Sharks and spiders, snakes and heights. These are all things that have

a good reason to be feared. However, some people experience extreme fear to things that make

no sense. Fear of money, fear of the color yellow, people that are literally fearful of everything.

Scientists have come up with the word “phobia” for these extreme fears. Scientists have come up

with names for them, but do they know why we have phobias?

Fear starts in a part of the brain called the amygdala. The automatic nervous system

response to fear is to freeze, run, and fight. The physical reactions we have to fear are much the

same to many: increased heart rate, higher breathing rate, more adrenaline, and so on and so

forth. The effects on the body can worsen if the fear is extreme enough, like a phobia. Hence the

fact that people can be “scared to death.” All of these facts have been confirmed by the

University of West Alabama and the Smithsonian. As the years go on, more and more weird or

rare phobias are being discovered, so what is the cause of these fears?

There are many different ways that scientists say phobias can occur. A cite from the

United Kingdom said that phobias develop because of experiences during childhood,

adolescence, or early adulthood. The John Hopkins Medical page claimed that phobias occur

because of genetic and environmental factors. Both use evidence from past studies to support

their claims, and both seem to be correct in their assumptions. So, how do phobias actually

occur?
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According to John Hopkins, 19 million Americans suffer from phobias of many different

varieties. “Certain phobias have been linked to a very bad first encounter with the feared object

or situation.” It then continues to say that though a bad first experience is the cause for many,

there are still many cases in which the person simply develops a phobia without ever

experiencing it. It has no mention that age affects the phobia, like the UK cite suggests.

Many people believe that they have phobias because they experience fear in a situation.

However, this is often untrue. People with phobias know their fear is extreme to the point that it

interferes with their daily activities. An example of this is social phobia, which is mentioned in

both the John Hopkins article and an EBSCOhost approved Clinical Psychology Review. Many

have gone through cognitive therapy to help their anxiety, and though they may manage their

phobia, there is no direct treatment for it. The Psychology Review suggests that though there are

ways to contain your fear, since the brain functions of each individual person is so different, it is

extremely difficult to adapt the cognitive technology separately.

An article recently published by an individual at Kent State University suggested that

there is no defined way of why phobias occur. There have been many studies with no clear

results as to why they occur. She says that the “primary challenge facing research on the [cause]

of fear-pathology is [examining] if increased generation of fear in response to threat (greater fear

reactivity), or poor recovery (decreased fear inhibition), is more predictive of disease.”

There are many ideas of why phobias occur, and through the cites researched throughout

this essay it seems as if there is no defined cause. I need to do further research on the specific

studies done on individual to obtain the results they were getting, but I feel as if there are many

answers to my question I look more into.

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Works Cited

“Causes - Phobias.” NHS Choices, NHS, 21 Oct. 2018, https://www.nhs.uk/mental-

health/conditions/phobias/causes/. Accessed 6 March 2022.

Nylocks, Karin. FEAR-PATHOLOGY ETIOLOGY: FEAR REACTIVITY, FEAR

RECOVERY, AND REGULATORY RESOURCES. 2020. Kent State University,

Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center,

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1582126029109518. Accessed 4

March 2022.

“Phobias.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2018, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-

and-diseases/phobias . Accessed 6 March 2022.

Stravynski, Ariel, et al. “Cognitive Causes of Social Phobia: A Critical Appraisal.”

Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 24, no. 4, Jan. 2004, pp. 421–40. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.01.006.

University of West Alabama, Psychology and Counseling News. “Why We Physically Feel Fear:

What Causes Fear?” UWA Online, 22 Oct. 2019, https://online.uwa.edu/news/what-

causes-fear/ . Accessed 6 March 2022.