Electrometric Studies of Sleep

The authors provided a differential test between stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) theory predictions in regard to the roles that the constructs of expectancy and of fear play in maintaining classically conditioned fear responding within the context of a human conditioned-avoidance paradigm. After the participants had developed sustained avoidance responding, their shock electrodes and avoidance response apparatus were removed to enhance the cognitive expectancy that the conditioned stimulus (CS) would not be followed by the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). This manipulation of expectancy was successful in 96% of the participants. The study was conducted over a 2-day period and involved 1 experimental group and 3 control groups. During the test trials, the authors used autonomic and self-report indices of fear to assess the presence or absence of fear to the CS. The data disconfirmed the prediction of the S-S theory that fear to the CS would be extinguished. The authors discuss the implications of this finding for S-S theories and for approaches in cognitive behavior therapy.     

Authoritarianism and fear responses to pictures: The role of social differences

Authoritarianism can be defined as the covariation of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981). All three of these tendencies involve adherence to specific standards of behavior: standards that could be exposed to threat and disruption. This study is an investigation of the self‐reported fear of authoritarians in response to threats. A sample of 126 university students was exposed to a series of pictures of potentially threatening people and situations. In general, participants with high scores on authoritarianism were more fearful than participants with low scores. This result was found for both social threats (i.e., social differences, social disorder) and personal threats (i.e., animals, dangerous situations). The strongest association between authoritarianism and fear involved cases of social differences, defined as elements of a person's appearance or behavior that involve diversity or deviance from common social norms. Regression analyses also indicated that variation in authoritarianism could be best predicted by fear of social differences. Thus, these data suggest that authoritarians are relatively sensitive to threat, and particularly to threats involving the “outsider” who does not fit authoritarian standards of uniformity and order. The data are also consistent with recent research and theory that right‐wing ideology is at least partly motivated by threat and fear.     

Age and Gender Differences in Children's Halloween Costumes

Based on data reported by Serbin and Sprafkin (1986), we predicted that the Halloween costumes of first and second graders would be less gender stereotyped than those of preschoolers and children in kindergarten. Children from one public elementary school and two preschools (N = 178) were individually interviewed on Halloween. Children were asked which character they were, who they wanted to be next year, and their age. The resulting 113 different costumes were then rated by college students for degree of masculinity, femininity, and scariness. In addition to main effects of gender and grade, two of four predicted interactions were significant. Older boys tended to prefer less masculine and more feminine costumes than younger boys, and older girls tended to prefer more masculine and less feminine costumes than younger girls.     

Seeing and Being Seen: Courage and the Therapist in Cross-Racial Treatment

ABSTRACT

Correction of the patient's distortion is often the focus of therapeutic treatment. However, the therapist's distortions, based upon pre-existing fears, which themselves are often rooted in greater societal issues and energized by the work with the patient (especially as they relate to issues of racial difference between the therapist and patient), can lead to clinical impasse. Just as an effective treatment relies upon the patient's opening up to correcting distortions, so too the therapist must be able to use transference response and become vulnerable to knowing and moving beyond his own fears and distortions.     

Strategic and Automatic Threat Processing in Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: A Startle Probe Investigation

Attentional bias research with chronic pain samples has yielded conflicting results. In the present investigation the startle paradigm was used to test the postulate that fear‐based mechanisms play an important role in attentional biases for pain‐related threat in chronic pain. Participants, including 31 individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain and 20 healthy controls, completed a startle task designed to measure attention to different types of words (neutral vs sensory pain vs affective pain vs health catastrophe) presented at different levels of cognitive processing (strategic vs automatic). Measures of fear‐based individual difference variables, including anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain, were also completed. Startle amplitudes and latencies to acoustic startle probes that followed word presentations were recorded. Data were analyzed with repeated measures ANOVAs and correlational analysis. Significant between‐group differences were found indicating that, relative to chronic pain participants, healthy controls had higher startle amplitude index scores for health catastrophe words. There was also a trend among patients with chronic pain for greater startle amplitude index scores for strategic presentations of sensory pain words. In the automatic condition, all participants demonstrated a lower startle latency index for sensory words relative to both affect and health catastrophe words, suggesting participants had more difficulty disengaging from affect and health catastrophe words or were more avoidant of sensory words. Correlational analyses indicated that startle response indices for words related to health catastrophe became more pronounced for chronic pain patients as anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain increased. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Fear in Adolescent Dating Relationships

The aims of this study were to assess fearful and aversive aspects of dating relationships among teens and to examine those experiences by gender. We examined both survey data and cognitive interviews with teens to understand how teens experience their dating relationships and how they interpret the meaning of the items in a fear measure modified for use with teens. We found that fearful and aversive dating situations are common in adolescent dating relationships. As teens move along the continuum from friendships to romantic involvement, both boys and girls experience the aggressive and coercive behaviors that sometimes accompany these new emotional and interpersonal situations.     

Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison

Numerous studies have sought to determine if religiosity is correlated with fear of death. Findings have been anything but consistent, with reports of negative relationships, positive relationships, no relationship, and even curvilinear associations. To shed light on this still contentious issue, the present study was undertaken among college students in three countries – Malaysia, Turkey, and the United States. Overall, the patterns in all three countries were similar. When linearity was assumed, there is a substantial positive correlation between most religiosity measures and fear of death. Assuming curvilinearity added slightly to the strength of the relationships in the US data and nothing to data from Malaysia or Turkey. Other findings were that on average females were more religious and feared death more than did males, and Muslims expressed considerably greater fear than did members of any other major religion. Results were discussed in the context of a new theory – called death apprehension theory. Among other things, it specifically predicts that death apprehension will be positively related to most religious beliefs and practices.     

无手机恐惧症概念分析

运用Rodgers演化概念分析法对无手机恐惧症的概念演化、概念属性、前置条件、结局、替代术语及相关术语、典型案例进行分析。涉及6个概念属性：强迫性担忧、错失恐惧、社交隔离焦虑、分离焦虑、放弃便利性、手机依恋;前置条件包括人口学因素、心理因素、社会因素;结局包括生理结局、心理结局、手机相关综合征。未来需将无手机恐惧症的内涵进一步扩大并深入剖析,为今后开展不同人群无手机恐惧症相关研究提供参考,也有助于无手机恐惧症评估工具、理论模型的开发与应用。