78 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
Practice Think of some automatic reactions or ref lexive
responses you have to your daily environment, including objects
and situations that make you feel anxious. For example, how do
you react when you hear music playing from an ice cream truck? Or
how do you feel when you experience the smell of a doctor’s office
or a hospital?
Fear conditioning, a type of classical conditioning, is a
behavioral principle of how people learn to predict aversive
events. Fear conditioning helps explain why some people are
anxious and why they might have a difficult time confront-
ing their anxiety. If, as a young child, you happened to be
stung by a bee, you likely developed a healthy fear of bees
and other insects that looked like bees (wasps, hornets,
yellow jackets, and so on). Perhaps you never were stung but
nevertheless have a fear of bees, either after hearing about
them from a parent or friend or seeing someone get stung.
Fear, as it turns out, is a fairly universal phenomenon. It’s
made even more salient because of how our bodies respond
physically, including increases in both heart and respiration
rate and release of stress- related hormones. Along with these
symptoms, fear becomes even more significant to humans
because of our unique cognitive abilities to develop a rela-
tionship with fear through our thoughts, emotions, and
memories.
The second type of learning, operant conditioning, involves
voluntary behavior (as opposed to automatic or ref lexive
behavior, as in classical conditioning). Operant conditioning
received its name because individuals operate (behave) based
on inf luences from their environment, including both posi-
tive and negative consequences. This form of learning is a
useful way of training animals or people to behave in a certain