Momina Mateen

Preparedness and PhobiasOnce upon a time there were 2

lions. They lived happily in their forest with all their other friends. Then one day there was a very scary forest fire. One lion got scared and ran away whereas the other one tried to be brave and stayed. The brave lion got killed in the fire. Now we can say that the scared lion has an adapted behaviour of fear, it helped him survive.

Preparedness

There was once a man called Seligman. This man told everyone that we link some things together more than others. This suggests that we are more likely to fear fire and thunder as opposed to grass and shine.

VS

So what is preparedness??! Preparedness is due to evolution. It is the way evolution has ‘prepared’ us to learn about things that are threatening. So this suggests that our current fears may be due to our ancestors. For example we are more likely to make an association of fear and fire as opposed to a rock and fear. More common feared things that we are currently are afraid of and what our ancestors may have feared include snakes and spiders. Many feared situations usually include those that are life threatening like fire, deep water, and lightening.

“Preparedness all depends on the ‘survival of the fittest”

Momina Mateen

Seligman’s theory of preparedness supports the theory of classical conditioning. It emphasized the fact that phobias are not random. Currently many people are afraid of thunder because their ancestors were afraid of it.

Preparedness is can explain the following things:

1- Why some phobias are common compared to others.2- Why we do not easily learn fears of modern things that are dangerous. I.e.

knives.3- It also explains one trial learning

- If a child gets a wasp sting the first time they played with a wasps’ net, they may have learned to fear it.

So in short we are less likely to fear modern day things because according to the theory of preparedness our fears were evolved (genetically passed on from our ancestors to us). For instance we are more likely to fear a dog as opposed to a gun, according to this theory.