One of the basic emotions needed for a human being is fear. Fear is developed from infancy onwards based on their experiences. An experiment conducted with an infant provided an explanation of how fear is associated in infants (Watson and Rayner, 1920). The experiment was called as ‘Little Albert Experiment’ where an infant was conditioned to fear white laboratory rat associated with loud noise. During this experiment, child was allowed to play with a white lab rat and whenever the child touches the lab rat a loud noise was created back of the infant by striking with hammer in steel rod. The infant started to cry and later on the child was experienced fear related with furry objects. The findings of the study concluded that for infants a fear can be introduced through conditioning where the child was previously afraid of. There fear was introduced based on false-situation based experiences and true experiences.
Fear is considered to be a necessary emotion in all human beings based on appropriate situations. Fear can generate a flight or fight response during a threat situation. Human’s adrenaline rush during threat situation helps them for their survival. Therefore fear can also be considered as a survival instinct. Extreme fear can lead to anxiety which later considered as phobia. Phobia can be specified based on animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational based, and other factors. A specific phobia is defined as an irrational fear for a specific object or a situation which affects a human daily functioning. Some of the interesting specific phobia are: Acousticophobia: Fear of Sounds, Acrophobia: Fear of Heights, Aphephobia: Fear physical touch or being contacted, Cynophobia: Fear of Dogs, Ohidiophobia: Fear of snakes. Phobias can be caused mainly on three reasons: experience, observing and being told about the danger. Treatment for specific phobia is through structured and consistent exposure based-exercise, and rapid behavioral treatment. Under therapeutic supervision these treatments are followed for the patients. Overall fear is a necessary emotion needed for the survival whereas extreme irrational fear can be affecting the overall functioning of a human.