 Hey guys, welcome back to Psych2Go. My name is Kim, and today I'm going to be teaching you 12 frightening facts about fear and phobias that you might not know. The ability to experience fear has been hardwired into almost all of our brains, so almost all of us will have experienced fear at least a few times in our lives. But what do we really know about it? What do adolescents fear, and how do fears differ between age groups? What is the no-cebo effect, and can virtual reality help someone overcome something like PTSD? Keep watching to find out and learn lots more cool facts about fears and phobias. A persistent irrational fear is called a phobia. The subjects of phobia aren't always something you'd expect people to be extremely afraid of. Some less common phobias include Pogonophobia, Apophobia, Romedrosophobia, Taphophobia, Alloidrophobia, Wynnearophobia, Metaphobia, Thalassophobia, and Helmenthophobia. A fear response happens when we encounter a situation that our bodies perceive as dangerous or threatening to us. When such a situation arises, our brains quickly decide to either confront the threat, or deal with it, and deal with it, or avoid the threat and flee. This is also called the fight or flight response. In some extreme cases, it may also lead to the freeze response, a fear paralysis. What do adolescents fear most? Adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age were asked what they feared most. The 10 most given answers were terrorist attacks, spiders, death, being a failure, war, criminal or gang violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war. In another quest to find what people feared most, author Bill Tancer in 2008 analyzed the most frequent online queries with the phrase fear of. The top 10 most searched for fears included flying, heights, clowns, intimacy, death, rejection, people, snakes, failure, and driving. And also, other surveys reported other common fears such as the fear of spiders, cockroaches, water in closed spaces, tunnels, bridges, needles, social rejection, examination and public speaking. It is possible to make an animal or person fear something, often by association. This process of fear learning is called conditioning, though conditioning can also be used for more positive purposes too. Placebo and nocebo. So, you've all heard of the placebo effect I'm assuming, which is when people experience positive results, sometimes on medicine, because they expect them or are told they will. The opposite is the nocebo effect, which experiences negative effects because you fear or think you're going to get negative effects. Fear is contagious. If you see other people with fearful expressions, chances are you too will start feeling nervous. Humans are social animals and live in groups and communities. If there is something threatening the group and one person expresses fear, it would be beneficial if everyone was brought to a more alert state. This increases the chance of survival and is something passed down from way back in like cave people. Common fears change with age groups. In early childhood, separation anxiety and fear of strangers are common. In the period after that, fears are specific, like objects and scenarios, like animals or thunderstorms. And during adolescence, most fears revolve around social situations and in adulthood, fears are often more abstract, for example, something like failure. Virtual reality can be used to treat fear and or anxiety disorders. For people who have truly extreme fear responses, so extreme that normal exposure would be too much of a stretch, virtual reality therapy can be offered as a step to recovery. This is used in cases where real exposure therapy would be completely unsafe. For example, PTSD soldiers who were deployed in a war, it is completely unethical to send them back to a war, so you would just have it virtually represented to them so they can get over the fear rather than sending them right into the middle of another war. You might expect people with PTSD, phobias or anxiety to have exceptionally high responses to all fear inducing stimuli, but they actually don't. They have normal or average responses to situations. The difference, however, is that they have fear responses to things that people normally wouldn't. For example, social situations for one person who does not have anxiety or PTSD would be completely fine in a group of people in a classroom setting for example, but someone with anxiety or PTSD would not be okay with that, and they would get fear symptoms from that. Okay, that's all for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Make sure to give this video a big thumbs up, comment down below, and subscribe to this channel. Also make sure to go check out my channel. I will have the link on the screen and down in the description box. I will see you guys next time. Bye!