Emotional reactivity in specific phobia: Gender differences and the three system of repsonse patterns of concordance

This study deals with patterns of concordance between the different component of emotional reactivity in specific animal phobia, as a function of gender of participants (39 females and 24 males, who were phobic to cocroaches). An exposure procedure is used, in which the spatial proximity of the phobic stimulus with respect to the subject is manipulated. After a baseline and the anticipacion phase, the phobic stimuli were present, followed by a recovery phase. Subjetive, behavioral and physiological emotional responses were assessed across the different phases. Results indicated that female were not generally more reactive than males, though the former showed more reactivity than the latter in some specific behavioral and subjetive measures. In addition, there was an inverse relationship between controllable responses (subjetive and behavioral) and involuntary reponses for males, which supports the hypothesis that males intentionally inhibit emotional responses.