Question

As Jay is on his way to work in a crowded subway car, the train comes to a sudden halt and all the lights go off. Many passengers lose their balance and people start screaming. Within the commotion, several people stumble over Jay. He experiences intense fear: his heart begins to pound, he feels short of breath, and he begins to perspire.

After this event, Jay experiences physiological and emotional arousal whenever he is in a confined environment. He becomes unwilling to leave home because he feels that it is impossible for him to avoid confined spaces.
Jay's fear of confined spaces results from:
A. stimulus discrimination.
B. stimulus generalization.
C. second-order conditioning.
D. spontaneous recovery.

Answer 1

Jay's fear is an example of stimulus generalization, where a response to a specific stimulus is spread to similar situations, leading to the same fearful response in any confined space.

Step-by-step explanation:

Jay's fear of confined spaces resulting from the intense fear he experienced on the subway can be explained by stimulus generalization. This psychological phenomenon occurs when a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated with similar stimuli, leading to the same response despite differences in the original and new stimuli. In Jay's case, the confined space of the subway, alongside the sudden halt and the loss of balance, has become a conditioned stimulus for the intense fear response. Now, any environment that feels confined triggers Jay's physiological and emotional arousal, indicating a generalization from the original fear-inducing situation to similar environments.