Phobias: Fighting the Fear. Helen Saul

Cook followed Öhman’s protocol to the letter, he confirmed that fear of ancient objects was more resilient than that of modern threats. But the difference was slight. Overall, Cook’s work provided only flimsy support for Öhman and also raised questions about the relevance of some features of the experiment.

      Cook was not the only one to have trouble replicating Öhman’s work. An American duo, Richard McNally from Chicago medical school and Edna Foa from Pennsylvania, changed mushrooms for strawberries in Öhman’s experiments. This was enough to eliminate differences in reactions to threatening and non-threatening objects. Even people who were phobic of snakes or spiders before the experiment reacted to strawberries just as strongly.

      Perhaps the greatest disappointment to advocates of the theory is that it has little impact in the phobia clinic. Despite the predictions of Seligman and Öhman that fears of ancient threats are more easily acquired, more deeply ingrained and harder to reverse, this seems not to be the case. The Scottish and Sri Lankan studies mentioned earlier both found that the vast majority of phobias in these two quite different countries are related to ancient threats. However, neither study linked phobias of ancient threats to more severe impairment. Zafiropoulou, who led the Scottish study, said that success of treatment was unrelated to the type of phobia and suggested that the concept of phobias as vestiges of our ancient past is little practical use.