Common fears: a comparison of adolescents' self-generated and fear survey schedule generated fears.

Investigations into normative fear in adolescence have indicated that the most common fears are consistently death-related and danger-related. Assessments have most commonly been made from self-reports on fear survey schedules. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to determine whether adolescents would provide responses comparable to those generated through the use of a fear survey schedule when asked to list their 3 greatest fears. A total of 439 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years (237 girls, 201 boys, 1 sex not reported) listed their greatest fears; then they completed the 78-item Fear Survey Schedule for Children-II (E. Gullone & N. J. King, 1992). Consistent with past research, the 10 most common fears generated via the fear schedule related to death and danger. However, on the whole, the self-generated fears deviated from the death and danger theme, also including fear of failure, fear of animals, and fear of the unknown. A tendency toward global responses in self-generated fears appeared to encompass the majority of specific death-related fears included in the fear schedule, thus allowing for other predominant fears to be listed among the 3 most common.     

Common Fears: A Comparison of Adolescents' Self-Generated and Fear Survey Schedule Generated Fears

Investigations into normative fear in adolescence have indicated that the most common fears are consistently death-related and danger-related. Assessments have most commonly been made from self-reports on fear survey schedules. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to determine whether adolescents would provide responses comparable to those generated through the use of a fear survey schedule when asked to list their 3 greatest fears. A total of 439 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years (237 girls, 201 boys, 1 sex not reported) listed their greatest fears; then they completed the 78-item Fear Survey Schedule for Children-II (E. Gullone & N. J. King, 1992). Consistent with past research, the 10 most common fears generated via the fear schedule related to death and danger. However, on the whole, the self-generated fears deviated from the death and danger theme, also including fear of failure, fear of animals, and fear of the unknown. A tendency toward global responses in self-generated fears appeared to encompass the majority of specific death-related fears included in the fear schedule, thus allowing for other predominant fears to be listed among the 3 most common.     

Ethnic identification biases responses to the Padua Inventory for obsessive-compulsive disorder

The authors report differential item functioning (DIF) between Black and White participants completing the 60-item Padua Inventory (PI) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The authors use an Internet-generated sample that included 105 Blacks, 67 Hispanics, 582 Whites, and 136 additional participants reporting an OCD diagnosis. Factor analysis replicated prior work indicating the PI consists of four factors: contamination fears, checking behaviors, impaired control over thoughts, and fear of losing control over impulses. On the contamination subscale, nonclinical Black and Hispanic mean scores were as high as the OCD group. Comparing Blacks to Whites, the authors applied an item response theory, DIF-graded response model to each factor and found significant DIF on eight items, with biased items in each factor. Results suggest that extraneous factors contribute to racial differences on scores. Cultural practices and fear of being negatively stereotyped may contribute to item bias.     

Genetic and environmental causes of the interrelationships between self-reported fears. A study of a non-clinical sample of Norwegian identical twins and their families

The present study reports results from a study of the self-reported fears of identical twins and their spouses and offspring. Factor analysis with oblique rotation of questionnaire responses yielded four correlated fear dimensions: situational fears, illness-injury fears, social fears, and fear of small animals. Models allowing for genetic and cultural transmission, together with specially correlated environments for twins, were fitted, both for separate fears and across fears. Simple models with only genetic and uncorrelated environments were sufficient to account for each the fear dimensions considered separately. The cross-dimensional analyses revealed a genetic and an environmental factor common to the four fear dimensions, together with fear-specific genetic and environmental factors. The impact of the common genetic and common environmental factor varied across dimensions. No evidence of cultural transmission or specially correlated twin environments of the cross-dimensional environments was detected. It is concluded that both common and fear-specific genes and (individual-specific) common and fear-specific environments are necessary to account for the data. The results are discussed in terms of the prepared learning hypothesis and the expectancy bias hypothesis.     

The dimensional structure of people's fears,threats, and concerns and their relationship with right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation

Most theories addressing the topic have proposed that threat and fear underlie right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), and many empirical findings have been consistent with this proposition. Important questions, however, remain unanswered, such as whether RWA is associated with fear and threat in general or only specific kinds of fear and threat. Theories of RWA generate markedly different predictions on this issue, particularly with respect to social or personal fears, and whether the association would also hold for the closely related construct of social dominance orientation (SDO). We investigated the issue by asking 463 undergraduate students to rate their feelings of fear, concern, and anxiety to a comprehensive 93‐item list of potential fears and threats, which were formulated as either personal or social. Exploratory factors analysis identified five distinct fear–threat factors: Harm to Self, Child, or Country; Personal and Relationship Failures; Environmental and Economic Fears; Political and Personal Uncertainties; and Threats to Ingroup. All the fear–threat factors were correlated with RWA, with the strongest correlations being for Threats to Ingroup, and with stronger effects for social than for personal fears. None of the fear factors correlated with SDO. These relationships were not affected by controlling for Social Desirability or Emotional Stability (EMS). When the intercorrelations between fear factors and EMS were controlled using ridge regression, only Threats to Ingroup predicted RWA. Structural equation modeling indicated good fit for a model in which low levels of EMS had a significant path to Threats to Ingroup, which in turn had a significant path to RWA, and EMS having a significant though weak indirect (fully mediated) inverse effect on RWA. Implications of these findings for theories of authoritarianism and future research are discussed.     

A Canonical-Correlation Analysis of 16 Fear Factors and the MMPI

To determine clinical correlates of 16 fear factors of the Wolpe-Lang Fear Survey Schedule, the fear factor and MMPI scores of 92 psychiatric inpatients were subjected to a canonical-correlation analysis. The results produced three combinations of scores which yielded statistically reliable canonical-correlation coefficients: three fear factors related to psychotic levels of personality disorganization; two related to fairly directly experienced neurotic anxiety; and five related to neurotic levels of anxiety “bound” by somatic complaints. The results suggest different treatment approaches for different patterns of expressed fears. The interpretation of several of the factors (previously related to clinical status) awaits further research.     

Hereditary Differences in Trainability of Purebred Dogs

The Wolpe-Lazarus Fear Survey Schedule was administered to a sample of 553 girls and 559 boys ranging in age between 12 and 18 years, and their responses were factor analyzed. The most prominent factors to emerge were those loading on items in the Social stimuli and Tissue damage categories. An analysis of frequency of response to schedule items indicated that this prominence was not a problem of item distribution in the schedule. The findings are discussed in relation to theoretical accounts of fears, and the author concludes that no one particular theoretical position can adequately account for the major findings.     

Fear of storms and hurricanes in Antillean and Belgian children

The present study assessed fear of hurricanes in children who had been confronted with this natural event (i.e., Antillean children, n=161). Their fear levels were compared to those of children who are unfamiliar with such an event (i.e., Belgian children, n=185). Antillean children reported significantly higher levels of fear of storms than Belgian children did, thus providing support for the notion that exposure to dangerous events promotes children's fears of those events. Surprisingly, however, Antillean children had lower scores on the 'Hurricanes' item than Belgian children. Plausibly, differences in how children interpreted this item may have accounted for this unexpected finding. That is, ratings of Antillean children were probably based on actual experiences with hurricanes, whereas scores of Belgian children presumably reflected appraisal of threat in case they would be confronted with such an event. Implications of this finding for the assessment of childhood fears are briefly discussed.     

Characteristics of individuals with fear of spiders

Abstract

This paper reports the results of two studies which investigated some of the factors that differentiated individuals with fear of spiders from those without such fears. The main results suggested that (a) there was little evidence that fear of spiders in nonclinical subjects is normally acquired through direct conditioning experiences; (b) there was some evidence for a familial component to spider fears; (c) there was no support for the view that individuals reporting a fear of spiders were especially sensitized to the movement cues possessed by spiders; (d) fear of spiders was not associated either with higher levels of trait anxiety or with an increased predisposition to other fears in general; but (e) fear of spiders did appear to be associated with increased fear of other animals, but only animals that are normally considered fear-evoking or disgust-evoking. These results provide little support for a traditional conditioning view of spider fears, and they are not entirely consistent with some preparedness accounts of the acquisition of specific fears. However, the results do suggest that fear of spiders is part of a functionally integrated set of animal fears, and it is argued that the present results could be better understood by attempting to integrate predator-defence and disease-avoidance models of animal fears.     

General and specific fears in referred and self-referred adult patients with extreme dental anxiety.

The levels of, and relationships between, dental fear and general fears and phobias were studied in 109 adult patients at a specialized dental fear clinic using two dental fear scales (the Dental Anxiety Scale and the Dental Fear Survey) together with the Fear Survey Schedule II (FSS-II) and some additional fear items. Referred and self-referred fearful dental patients answered mailed questionnaires in conjunction to being put on a 1 yr waiting list for treatment. Among feared objects and situations the separate item 'pain' revealed the highest mean scores for both men and women, followed by fear of suffocating, death of a loved one and sharp objects among women, and death of a loved one, suffocating and hypodermic needles among men. With few exceptions, women scored higher than men. The frequencies of extreme fears (6 and 7 on a 7-point scale) were high and 92.7% of the patients reported at least one extreme fear. Half of the subjects (49.5%) reported five fears or more. It was also shown that a number of FSS-II items correlated to dental fear indicating a relationship between general and dental fear. These results indicated that a large proportion of these dentally fearful individuals were prone to fear-associated reactions and behaviors, which has previously been shown to negatively influence the prognosis of treatment.     

A factor analysis of a 100-item fear survey inventory

A 100-item fear survey schedule was constructed by compiling all previously published fear surveys to effect a more comprehensive assessment technique. It was administered to 435 college students. Reliability estimates of this instrument approximated 0.87. An orthogonal factor analysis was performed, and yielded 21 interpretable factors within each sex. Sixteen of these were similar across sex. The major areas of fear response were: social criticism; medical intervention; contamination; sudden noises; cars; death.

Previous research had indicated a four factor structure. Results of this study indicate that the number of factors varies with the number of input items. The present study presents a more comprehensive picture of the underlying factor structure of fear responding.     

Specificity of interoceptive fear to panic disorders

It has been argued that fear of interoceptive sensations is a maintaining factor in panic disorders. This study investigated whether interoceptive fears are specific to panic disorders or whether they are a feature of neurosis in general. Twenty-nine panic patients, 28 nonpanicking neurotic controls, and 29 normal controls were compared for their scores on a 14-item questionnaire intended to measure interoceptive fears. Indeed it was found that panic patients scored considerably higher than both control groups, whereas no significant differences emerged between the two control groups. It is concluded that interoceptive fear is diagnostically specific to panic disorders.This study was partly supported by the Dutch Organization for Fundamental Research (ZWO/Psychon., 560-268-001) and was carried out at the unit for clinical behavior therapy at Vijverdal Mental Hospital, Maastricht, The Netherlands.     

Agoraphobia in women: factor analysis of symptoms and personality correlates of factor scores in a clinical population

One hundred and sixty female patients with a DSM-III diagnosis of agoraphobia completed a measure of fears and general symptoms (FSS) and personality (HDHQ). Many patients had significant psychological symptoms in addition to their agoraphobia. FSS scores were factor analysed. First-order analysis revealed agoraphobia as a heterogeneous clinical entity occurring independently of a large General Symptoms factor which included panic attacks. Second-order analysis revealed a General Symptoms/Social Phobia factor and a well-defined but heterogeneous Agoraphobia factor comprising the lower-order factors Claustrophobia, Travel Fears and Agoraphobia (fear of crowded public places). Correlations of first- and second-order factors with HDHQ scores showed that the Travel Fears factor was not associated with abnormal personality traits, whereas the Claustrophobia and Agoraphobia factors were. This suggested that travel fears should respond well to behaviour therapy per se, whereas additional treatment aimed at modifying abnormal personality traits may sometimes be indicated for claustrophobia and fear of crowded places. The heterogeneous nature of agoraphobia and the large size of the independent General Symptoms factor underlined the desirability of a multi-modal approach to treatment and research.     

The influence of gender on children's ratings of fear in self and same-aged peers

In the present study, gender differences in children's fear were examined. Nine-year-old children were asked to rate their own fears, the fears of their peers of the opposite gender, and the fears of their peers of the same gender, using the Fear Survey Schedule for Children--Revised (Ollendick, 1983). Consistent with previous investigations, the results revealed that boys rated themselves as less fearful than girls. In addition, both male and female judges rated "other boys" as less afraid than "other girls." These findings emerged whether fear was examined in terms of intensity or prevalence. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

EMERGENCE OF REINFORCER PREFERENCE AS A FUNCTION OF SCHEDULE REQUIREMENTS AND STIMULUS SIMILARITY

Tustin (1994) recently observed that an individual's preference for one of two concurrently available reinforcers under low schedule requirements (concurrent fixed-ratio [FR] 1) switched to the other reinforcer when the schedule requirements were high (concurrent FR 10). We extended this line of research by examining preference for similar and dissimilar reinforcers (i.e., those affecting the same sensory modality and those affecting different sensory modalities). Two individuals with developmental disabilities were exposed to an arrangement in which pressing two different panels produced two different reinforcers according to progressively increasing, concurrent-ratio schedules. When two dissimilar stimuli were concurrently available (food and a leisure item), no clear preference for one item over the other was observed, regardless of the FR schedules in effect (FR 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20). By contrast, when two similar stimuli were concurrently available (two food items), a clear preference for one item emerged as the schedule requirements were increased from FR 1 to FR 5 or FR 10. These results are discussed in terms of implications for conducting preference assessments and for selecting reinforcers to be used under training conditions in which response requirements are relatively high or effortful.     

The longitudinal relationship between fear of positive evaluation and fear of negative evaluation

Available research suggests that fear of negative evaluation and fear of positive evaluation are related but distinct constructs that each contribute to social anxiety, implying a need to focus on these fears in treatment. Yet, this research is almost entirely based on cross-sectional data. We examined the longitudinal relationship between fears of positive and negative evaluation over three time points in a sample of undergraduate students. We tested competing models consistent with two basic positions regarding these fears: (1) that fear of positive evaluation only appears to affect social anxiety because it arises from the same, single underlying trait as fear of negative evaluation, and (2) fears of positive and negative evaluation are correlated, but clearly distinct, constructs. The best-fitting model was an autoregressive latent-trajectory model in which each type of fear had a separate trait-like component. The correlation between these trait-like components appeared to fully account for the relationships between these constructs over time. This investigation adds to the evidence in support of the second position described above: fear of positive evaluation is best interpreted as a separate construct from fear of negative evaluation.     

Personality and Fears

The contribution to self-reported fears of individual differences in extraversion-introversion (E) and neuroticism (N) was studied in 102 female college students. Four groups of 20 Ss each were constituted - high E high N, high E low N, low E high N, and low E low N. A fear survey schedule and the Eysenck Personality Inventory were employed. By analysis of variance, total fear scores were a significant function of N but not E. Extreme or phobic fears were a significant function of neither personality dimensions, though the N effect approached conventional significance levels. Correlational analyses on the full sample confirmed these findings, except that a statistically significant though slight (6 percent) proportion of extreme fear variance was accountable by N.     

Cultural effects on the expression of some fears by Chinese and British female students

To compare the culturally acquired aspects of fears in two different cultures, the author gave an augmented version of the I. M. Marks and A. M. Mathews Fear Scale (1979) to 50 female students in China and 49 female students in England. When the rank ordering of the fears measured in both groups was compared, the author found a high positive correlation, suggesting cross-cultural consistencies in the ranking of fearful objects. Both groups most feared social criticism and appraisal by others, followed by fears of blood, pain, and injury. The students feared least aspects related to agoraphobia. When the expressed levels of fear were compared, the Chinese students had significantly lower fear scores for many items. The reasons for those scores are discussed in terms of lower actual fear levels, moderating response sets, or socialization practices. The fears that showed no cultural differences were the ones that had early biologically relevance, such as fear of the dark and of high places. Only the socially learned fears showed cultural differences.     

A psychometric reanalysis of the Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire

The psychometric properties of the 27-item Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire (APPQ) were evaluated in 1930 outpatients with DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders. Although prior findings of a 3-factor latent structure were upheld in several replications (Social Phobia, Agoraphobia, Interoceptive), three items failed to load on their predicted factor (Interoceptive). Multiple-groups CFAs indicated that the measurement properties of the APPQ were invariant in male and female patients, with the exception of an intercept of one item from the Agoraphobia scale which evidenced bias against females. The three APPQ dimensions were consistently associated with high levels of scale reliability and factor determinacy. Strong evidence of concurrent validity of the Social Phobia and Agoraphobia factors was obtained in relation to interview and questionnaire measures. Although the Interoceptive factor was more strongly related to criterion measures of anxiety sensitivity and fear of panic than Social Phobia, the Agoraphobia factor had the strongest relationships with these validity indices. The results are discussed in regard to psychometric implications for the APPQ and conceptual issues pertaining to the discriminant validity of fear of agoraphobic situations and fear of sensation-producing activities.     

Contemporary Fears of Children and Adolescents: Coping and Resiliency in the 21st Century

This study was prompted by the continual exposure of youth to disasters (e.g., 9/11, Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, school violence) and the call for revisions in fear assessments to reflect contemporary fears. Fears of 1,033 students in Grades 2–12 were examined using the American Fear Survey Schedule for Children (J. J. Burnham, 2005). Results indicated that new fears have emerged in the 21st century, alerting counselors to consider preventative and intervention activities to address contemporary fears.