Hereditary determinants of fears and phobias: A critical review

The main conclusion was that, although the learning-conditioning approach is inadequate, no body of research conclusively supports the evolutionary hypothesis.

Abstract

Although behavior therapy was founded on the assumption that problematic behaviors are learned during the life history of the individual, there is currently a strong tendency to minimize or to rule out altogether the "learning-conditioning" analysis of fears and phobias in favor of an emphasis on hereditary factors. This article examined several research findings that have been presented as consistent with the assumption that fears and phobias are more dependent upon inherited predispositions than upon organisms' individual learning histories. Research areas covered included allegations of failures to replicate. Watson and Rayner's (1920) influential fear conditioning study, taste-aversion learning phenomena, human conditioning experiments with phobic and nonphobic preaversive stimuli, research on the topography of avoidance responses, and the "hawkgoose" effect with birds. The main conclusion was that, although the learning-conditioning approach is inadequate, no body of research conclusively supports the evolutionary hypothesis. Attempts to fit the ontogeny of fear into the traditional "innate versus learned" framework may have hampered identification of developmental factors underlying fear behavior that go beyond concepts of heredity and learning.