In psychology, preparedness is a concept developed to explain why certain associations are

learned Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of ...

more readily than others. For example,

phobia A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avo ...

s related to survival, such as snakes, spiders, and heights, are much more common and much easier to induce in the laboratory than other kinds of fears. According to Martin Seligman, this is a result of our

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

ary history. The theory states that organisms which learned to fear environmental threats faster had a survival and reproductive advantage. Consequently, the innate predisposition to fear these threats became an adaptive human trait. The concept of preparedness has also been used to explain why

taste aversion Conditioned taste aversion occurs when an animal acquires an aversion to the taste of a food that was paired with aversive stimuli. The Garcia effect is that the aversion develops more strongly for stimuli that cause nausea than other stimuli. Th ...

s are learned so quickly and efficiently compared with other kinds of

classical conditioning Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the lear ...

References

External links

The Malicious Serpent: Snakes as a Prototypical Stimulus for an Evolved Module of Fear
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