Claustrophobia

Does Claustrophobia cause people to deviate from confined areas? The independent variable is claustrophobia, and the dependent variable is the confined areas. Our hypothesis to this question is yes claustrophobia can be cured and reduced by cognitive behavioral therapy. The issue of claustrophobia is very important due to its impact on an individuals everyday life, since it affects a number of individuals throughout the world. A phobia is an anxiety disorder that is shown by an irrational fear of confined spaces. This phobia can cause a person to stay away form confined spaces such as a crowded store, sporting and social events, as well as elevators that could bring on this irrational fear. In …show more content…

Subjects used in this test where placed in two different sized rooms. One the size of a standard closet and the other a file room. In the larger room, the subject was placed in for two minutes with the lights out. Subjects also had the ability to ring for the experimenter. In the smaller room, the subject was there in the dark, the door locked and no way to get help. The walls were sound proof so yelling was not an option. The reason for the two different rooms was to increase anxiety levels in the smaller room. The results proved that by placing the subjects in the first room, the larger of the two, and then the smaller one, the subjects had high increases of anxiety levels. A major finding was that a purely cognitive procedure did reduce both reported fear and panic, and lead to more confident predictions of a second enclosed space, in relation to a control group. The group of subjects that discussed their fears and the experiment prior to participating allowed them to calmly flow through the experiment. Claustrophobia 6 The Reduction of Claustrophobia (Part2) A clinical experiment comparing methods of fear