In psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, desensitization (also called inurement) is a process for mitigating the harmful effects of phobia

Phobia

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational...

s or other disorders

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

. It also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary. Agoraphobics, who fear open spaces and social gatherings outside their own home, may be gradually led to increase their interaction with the outside world by putting them in situations that are uncomfortable but not panic-provoking for them. Mastering their anxiety in very small doses can allow them to take greater steps to self-reliance. Desensitization can be an alternative or a supplement to anxiety-reducing medication.

Steps to desensitization

This first thing the person has to do in order to get over their fear is to learn how to relax their mind. After being able to do this, there are steps one should complete in order to desensitize oneself to that phobia.

In this example the person has a fear of spiders:

1. Think of a spider
2. Look at a silly drawing of a spider
3. Look at a drawing of a spider
4. Look at a photo of a spider
5. Look at an empty spider web
6. Touch an empty spider web
7. Look at a real spider in a box
8. Hold the box with the spider
9. Look at a real spider, from across the room
10. Look at a real spider, from halfway across the room
11. Look at a real spider up close
12. Let a spider crawl on something you are holding, until you are able to have it crawl on you

In animals

Animals can also be desensitized to their rational or irrational fears. A race horse who fears the starting gate

Starting gate

A starting gate is a machine used in horse racing and dog racing to ensure a fair start in a race.-Thoroughbred/quarter horse racing:...

 can be desensitized to the fearful elements (the creak of the gate, the starting bell, the enclosed space) one at a time, in small doses or at a distance. Clay et al. (2009) conducted an experiment whereby he allocated rhesus macaques to either a desensitization group or a control group, finding that those in the desensitization group showed a significant reduction in both the rate and duration of fearful behavior. This supports the use of PRT training. Desensitization is commonly used with simple phobias like insect phobia.

Desensitization

Desensitization is a psychological process that has often been involved in explaining viewers' emotional reactions to media violence. Research on emotional reactions to violent messages has been concerned with the possibility that continued exposure to violence in the mass media will result in desensitization, that is, that exposure to media violence will undermine feelings of concern, empathy, or sympathy that viewers might have toward victims of actual violence. In an experiment to determine the effects on violent video games causing physiological desensitization to real-life violence, particiants played either a violent or non-violent video game for 20 minutes. After that, they watched a 10 minute video containing real-life violence while their heart rate and galvanic skin responses were being monitored. The participants who played violent video games previously to watching the video showed lower heart rate and galvanic skin response readings compared to those who had not played violent video games displaying a physiological desensitization to violence

To understand the effects of repeated exposure to violence, researchers have suggested that viewers become comfortable with violence that is initially anxiety provoking, much as they would if they were undergoing exposure therapy.

See also

• Systematic desensitization
  Systematic desensitization
  Systematic desensitization is a type of behavioral therapy used in the field of psychology to help effectively overcome phobias and other anxiety disorders. More specifically, it is a type of Pavlovian therapy / classical conditioning therapy developed by a South African psychiatrist, Joseph Wolpe...
  
  
• Sensitization
  Sensitization
  Sensitization is an example of non-associative learning in which the progressive amplification of a response follows repeated administrations of a stimulus. An everyday example of this mechanism is the repeated tonic stimulation of peripheral nerves that will occur if a person rubs his arm...
  
  
• Flooding (psychology)
  Flooding (psychology)
  Flooding is a form of behavior therapy and based on the principles of respondent conditioning. It is sometimes referred to as exposure therapy or prolonged exposure therapy. As a psychotherapeutic technique, it is used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder...
  
  
• Extinction (psychology)
  Extinction (psychology)
  Extinction is the conditioning phenomenon in which a previously learned response to a cue is reduced when the cue is presented in the absence of the previously paired aversive or appetitive stimulus.-Fear conditioning:...
  
  
• Habituation
  Habituation
  Habituation can be defined as a process or as a procedure. As a process it is defined as a decrease in an elicited behavior resulting from the repeated presentation of an eliciting stimulus...
  
  
• Conditioning
  Conditioning
  Conditioning may refer to:* In psychology, the process of performing some particular action to directly influence an individual's learning; see education...