Evolutionary Theory and Preparedness

Evolution and Phobias
The theory of evolution and preparedness can help explain biologically why people have phobias. To help you better understand this theory imagine this scenario: There are two animals living in a forest. One day there is a forest fire, and one animal runs away, while the other shows no fear and stays in the danger zone. According to the theory of evolution, the animal that runs away will survive. The same thing applies to humans. This shows that fear helps us survive.

Preparedness
Preparedness is the tendency to learn some associations more easily, quickly and permanently than others. Less input is needed to fear something that was harmful to us in our evolutionary past than something that was not. This is why we are more likely to fear snakes more than rocks. Our ancestors developed genes of fear for objects that were harmful to them and passed them down to us, so we are more 'prepared' to fear them over objects that were not harmful to them in the past. The idea of preparedness also explains why we do not easily learn fears of modern things that are potentially dangerous, such as cars or knives.

In conclusion, the biological theory of phobias suggests that we have genes of fear for these objects that were passed down to us from our ancestors, causing us to be more 'prepared' to fear objects that were harmful to early humans, making us more likely to fear these objects over objects that were not harmful to them in the past.

Bennet Levy and Marteau (1984)
This is a major study that you need to study in this syllabus. See Bennet-Levy and Marteau.

Seligman (1971)
Seligman (1971) said that we have evolved to be conditioned to fear some things more than others. Seligman thought that less input was needed to learn an association to a prepared stimulus than to a non prepared one. If evolution prepares us to learn to be afraid of fire, we will make an association between fear and fire much more quickly than between fear and a non prepared stimulus such as a rock. These things included situations which can be dangerous/threatening to humans early in their evolution, such as fire, deep water, lightning, and heights. These are all common phobias.