[3], An exaggerated, phobic fear of mice and rats has traditionally been depicted as a stereotypical trait of women, with numerous books, cartoons, television shows, and films portraying women screaming and jumping onto chairs or tables at the sight of a mouse. This showed that while monkeys can socially learn to fear snakes, their initial lack of fear can also be reinforced by the non-fearful responses of other monkeys. For more information on the psychiatric side, including how psychiatry groups phobias such as agoraphobia, social phobia, or simple phobia, see phobia. Cook & Mineka suggest a couple mechanisms for how this predisposition could work. Injun Joe is afraid of mice and rats in the 1995 anime movie, This page was last edited on 18 September 2020, at 13:42. However, there aren’t any phobias of more recently invented dangers (like guns). “Observational conditioning of snake fear in unrelated rhesus monkeys.” Journal of abnormal psychology 94.4 (1985): 591. 100% Upvoted. However, the other group, which saw the monkey respond fearfully to the flower but not the snake, did not develop a fear of flowers or snakes. Regardless, elephantine murophobia remains the basis of various jokes and metaphors. As translated by Philemon Holland (1601), "Of all other living creatures, they [elephants] cannot abide a mouse or a rat." no comments yet. “Observational conditioning of snake fear in rhesus monkeys.” Journal of abnormal psychology 93.4 (1984): 355. Van Le, Quan, et al. Often a synonym with the prefix "anti-" already exists (e.g. Phobias are one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States. This required a little movie magic: instead of having naïve monkeys observe the responses of actual fearful monkeys, they showed them a video of a monkey reacting fearfully to a stimulus. best. Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of murophobia, and is also invoked against rats and mice in general. Harvard University Press, 2009. Anti-religious sentiments are expressed in terms such as Christianophobia and Islamophobia. The immunization group, however, generally did not show a fear response to snakes (only 2 out of the 8 monkeys in this condition showed a fear response). They learned to fear snakes but not the other objects. It is sometimes referred to as musophobia (from Greek μῦς "mouse") or murophobia (a coinage from the taxonomic adjective "murine" for the family Muridae that encompasses mice and rats), or as suriphobia, from French souris, "mouse". Isbell, Lynne A. ( Log Out /  The following lists include words ending in -phobia, and include fears that have acquired names. Use of in vivo and in vitro desensitization in the treatment of mouse phobia: review and case study. The standard treatment of animal phobia is systematic desensitization, and this can be done in the consulting room (in vivo), or in hypnosis (in vitro). agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. They were interested in seeing whether this fear could be socially learned, so they exposed wild-reared monkeys to snakes while lab-reared monkeys watched. Cook & Mineka were interested in connecting their work on fear in monkeys to fear in humans, and specifically the very specific, intense fears we call phobias. Also, your blog is wonderful and it has many interesting facts. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. (The researchers first verified that watching the video was just as effective at socially teaching fear as watching the actual fearful monkey.) Dee Darwell, 56, lost consciousness after the monkeys surrounded her and sank their teeth into her arms and body. delusional fear of something in the roots of the hair that stops it from growing, fear of holes or textures with a pattern of holes, fear/dislike of England or English culture, fear/dislike of Hispanic people, Hispanic culture and the Spanish language, hypersensitivity to smells causing aversion to odors, hypersensitivity to sound causing aversion to sounds, hypersensitivity to light causing aversion to light, fear or hatred of books, as a cultural phenomenon, the property of fat rejection (sometimes also called, the property given to materials that are extremely difficult to get wet, For a list of words relating to various phobias not found in wikipedia, see the, This page was last edited on 30 September 2020, at 08:15. Some clinicians use a combination of both in vivo and in vitro desensitization during treatment. Terms should strictly have a Greek prefix although many are irregularly formed with Latin or even English prefixes. “Fear of snakes in wild-and laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).” Animal Learning & Behavior 8.4 (1980): 653-663. The classical board game Dou Shou Qi has the Rat kill an Elephant, and multiple editions of the rule book mentions that the Rat would crawl into the Elephant's ears to gnaw into its brain. Most people don’t seek treatment for these conditions, so cases largely go unreported. This experiment was repeated using a toy crocodile in place of a snake and a stuffed rabbit in place of a flower, with the same results. But here’s where things get interesting. To investigate this, the researchers tried to teach monkeys to be afraid of flowers. In this vein, Cook & Mineka wondered if fear of anything (whether dangerous or not) could be socially learned, or if, similar to phobias, the monkeys were evolutionally predisposed to fear only certain things. ), Interestingly, there is actually a theory (called the Snake Detection Theory) that suggests that the complex visual systems of primates developed for the purpose of detecting snakes so as to avoid them. Cook & Mineka next wanted to investigate whether extensive neutral prior experiences with snakes could affect whether lab-reared monkeys learned the fear of snakes. Polonophobia vs. anti-Polonism). I have a crippling phobia of those cymbal banging monkey things and every time I see them I want to scream and curl myself up in a ball and cry. Women are more likely to experience phobias than men. They found that only the wild-reared monkeys had a fear response to the snakes, indicating that the fear of snakes in rhesus monkeys is learned, rather than innate. Browse the user profile and get inspired. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. (Don’t worry – the snakes were behind plexiglass!) As monkeys and people are very similar, it is likely that we can learn fears too. For antonyms, see here, "-phobia" redirects here. Many -phobia lists circulate on the Internet, with words collected from indiscriminate sources, often copying each other. In the “immunization” condition, lab-reared monkeys observed the non-fearful responses of other lab-reared monkeys to snakes. As I’ve mentioned before, we often study animal cognition with a view to learning more about human cognition. photophobia). Fischler, C. "From lipophilia to lipophobia. The monkeys in the latent inhibition group showed a fear response when exposed to snakes again. The National Institute of Mental Health suggests that 8% of U.S. adults have some type of phobia. Monkeys first exposed to such a model monkey remained unaffected by later exposure to fearful models. [2] Such practice is known as content spamming and is used to attract search engines. So far, these results agree with what we’ve already learned about social learning. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Presumably the wild-reared monkeys would have had previous experience with snakes, but the lab-reared monkeys would not. In common usage, they also form words that describe dislike or hatred of a particular thing or subject (e.g. Sort by. “Selective associations in the observational conditioning of fear in rhesus monkeys.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 16.4 (1990): 372. The lab-reared monkeys initially didn’t have a fear response to snakes, but after observing the responses of wild-reared monkeys to snakes, they exhibited a fear response. Fear of mice may be treated by any standard treatment for specific phobias. This really is helping me with my revision! Mineka, Susan, Richard Keir, and Veda Price. The greater the fear response of the demonstrator monkey, the greater the fear response of the monkey that observed him. (It also suggests that pointing developed in order to allow us to warn others about snakes.). They noted that most phobias are of things that have existed for thousands of years (like heights and, yes, snakes). Mineka, Susan, et al. What might this result suggest about the mechanism for a predisposition to fear snakes? The suffix is antonymic to -phil-. Cook & Mineka were interested in connecting their work on fear in monkeys to fear in humans, and specifically the very specific, intense fears we call phobias. Fear of mice and rats is one of the most common specific phobias.It is sometimes referred to as musophobia (from Greek μῦς "mouse") or murophobia (a coinage from the taxonomic adjective "murine" for the family Muridae that encompasses mice and rats), or as suriphobia, from French souris, "mouse".. Log in or sign up to leave a comment log in sign up. There is a common folk belief that elephants are afraid of mice. “A comparison of the responses to snakes of lab-and wild-reared rhesus monkeys.” Animal Behaviour 12.2 (1964): 348-352. They further suggest that only those fears that monkeys are predisposed to can be learned socially. The fruit, the tree, and the serpent: why we see so well. The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος phobos, "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. homophobia). This suggests that there may be a role of evolution in the development of phobias. An article published in 1897 in American Journal of Psychology noted "the absurd tendency to give Greek names to objects feared (which, as Arndt says, would give us such terms as klopsophobia – fear of thieves, triakaidekaphobia – fear of the number 13....".[3]. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. save hide report. Numerous zoos and zoologists have shown that elephants can be conditioned not to react. These results indicate that monkeys are evolutionally predisposed to fear certain things, but not others. “Observational conditioning of fear to fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli in rhesus monkeys.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 98.4 (1989): 448.