characteristics

• behavioural characteristics:

  • panic - may include crying, screaming or running away or freezing, clinging or having a tantrum
  • avoidance - people tend to go to a lot of effort to prevent coming into contact with the phobic stimulus
  • endurance - when a person chooses to remain in the presence of the phobic stimulus
• emotional characteristics:


  • anxiety - an unpleasant state of high arousal that prevents a person relaxing and difficult to experience positive emotion
  • fear - immediate and extremely unpleasant response we experience when we encounter or think about a phobic stimulus
  • emotional response is unreasonable - the anxiety or fear is much greater than is 'normal' and disproportionate
• cognitive characteristics:

  • selective attention to the phobic stimulus - hard to look away from the phobic stimulus as it helps keep our attention on something really dangerous = gives us a best chance to react quickly
  • irrational beliefs - person may hold unfounded thoughts in relation to phobic stimuli
  • cognitive distortions - perceptions of a person with a phobia may be inaccurate and unrealistic