AP Syllabus focus:
‘Anxiety disorders involve excessive fear or anxiety and behavior disturbance, including phobias, agoraphobia, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder; causes include learning, maladaptive thinking, and biological or genetic factors.’
Anxiety disorders are marked by persistent, disproportionate threat responses that disrupt daily functioning. AP Psychology emphasises recognising key disorder patterns and explaining them using learning processes, maladaptive thinking, and biological or genetic influences.
Core features of anxiety disorders
Anxiety disorders: Psychological disorders involving excessive fear or anxiety plus related behavioural disturbance (e.g., avoidance, safety behaviours) that impairs functioning.
Fear is typically an immediate response to a specific threat, while anxiety is more future-focused (anticipation and worry). Behavioural disturbance commonly includes:
Avoidance (not entering feared situations)
Safety behaviours (actions that reduce perceived risk but maintain anxiety, such as constant reassurance-seeking)
Hypervigilance (scanning for threat cues)
Major anxiety disorders named in the syllabus
Specific phobias
A phobia involves intense fear of a particular object or situation (e.g., heights, needles) and strong avoidance.
Key pattern: fear is out of proportion and triggers immediate anxiety responses.
Maintenance: avoidance brings short-term relief, strengthening the avoidance habit.
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia involves fear and avoidance of situations where escape may be difficult or help unavailable (e.g., public transport, crowded places).
Often linked to concern about panic-like symptoms occurring in public.
Avoidance can generalise, narrowing a person’s “safe” spaces.
Panic disorder
Panic attack: A sudden surge of intense fear/discomfort with strong physical arousal (e.g., racing heart, shortness of breath) and cognitive distress (e.g., fear of losing control).
Panic disorder is characterised by recurrent panic attacks and persistent concern about additional attacks and/or maladaptive behavioural changes (e.g., avoiding exercise because it increases heart rate). A key factor is catastrophic interpretation of bodily sensations (e.g., “This heartbeat means I’m dying”).
Social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder involves intense fear of social situations where one may be scrutinised or negatively evaluated.
Core concern: embarrassment, rejection, or humiliation.
Behavioural disturbance: avoidance of speaking, eating, or performing in front of others, or enduring these situations with extreme distress.
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Chronic, excessive, hard-to-control worry across multiple domains (school, work, health), often accompanied by tension, restlessness, and concentration or sleep difficulties.
Unlike phobias (specific triggers), GAD features broad, persistent worry and “what if” thinking that is difficult to shut off.
Explanations and causes emphasised by the syllabus
Learning-based factors
Learning accounts focus on how anxiety can be acquired and maintained through experience.
Classical conditioning: a neutral cue becomes associated with fear (e.g., dog bite → fear of dogs).
Diagram of classical conditioning across phases (before, during, and after conditioning). It labels the neutral stimulus, unconditioned stimulus/response, and how repeated pairings produce a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response—an important mechanism for acquiring learned fear reactions. Source
Operant conditioning: avoidance is negatively reinforced because it reduces anxiety in the short term, making avoidance more likely in the future.
Observational learning: fear can be learned by watching others respond with alarm, especially in childhood.
Maladaptive thinking (cognitive factors)
Cognitive explanations emphasise biased information processing and unhelpful beliefs:
Attentional bias toward threat cues (noticing danger quickly)
Catastrophising (overestimating probability/severity of harm)
Intolerance of uncertainty (equating uncertainty with danger) These thought patterns increase perceived threat and promote avoidance and safety behaviours.
Biological or genetic factors
Biological approaches emphasise inherited vulnerability and physiology:
Genetic predispositions can increase baseline reactivity to stress and fear conditioning.
Arousal systems (autonomic nervous system activation) can intensify physical symptoms that individuals may misinterpret as dangerous, especially in panic-related problems.
Labeled schematic of autonomic nervous system outflow pathways to major organs, with sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions color-coded. It helps connect “autonomic arousal” to concrete bodily changes (e.g., cardiac, respiratory, and gastrointestinal targets) that can feed into panic-related catastrophic interpretations. Source
FAQ
Twin and adoption designs compare similarity across relatives.
If identical twins show higher concordance than fraternal twins, this suggests heritability.
Researchers also examine gene–environment interplay: genetic risk may be expressed more strongly under chronic stress.
The amygdala is commonly implicated in threat detection and fear learning.
Other findings often involve prefrontal regions (regulation of emotion) and hippocampal processes (context and memory), helping explain why fear can generalise to similar situations.
Safety behaviours (e.g., rehearsing excessively, avoiding eye contact) can prevent a person from learning that the feared outcome is unlikely.
They may also draw attention inward (to symptoms), increasing self-consciousness and reinforcing beliefs like “I can’t cope without my strategies.”
Avoidance can generalise through learning: if one place feels dangerous, similar places can start to trigger anxiety.
Over time, the person may restrict routes, rely on companions, or avoid unfamiliar settings, shrinking their “safe zone.”
No. Panic attacks can occur in other conditions or under high stress without meeting criteria for panic disorder.
Panic disorder involves ongoing concern about more attacks and/or significant behaviour change (e.g., persistent avoidance) that continues beyond a single episode.
Practice Questions
Explain one way maladaptive thinking can maintain an anxiety disorder. (2 marks)
1 mark: Identifies a relevant cognitive factor (e.g., catastrophising, threat bias, intolerance of uncertainty).
1 mark: Explains maintenance (e.g., increases perceived threat, drives avoidance/safety behaviours, prevents disconfirmation).
A student avoids buses after having a panic attack on public transport. Using learning and cognitive explanations, discuss how this avoidance might develop and persist. (6 marks)
Up to 2 marks: Learning explanation (classical association with buses; avoidance negatively reinforced by anxiety reduction).
Up to 2 marks: Cognitive explanation (catastrophic misinterpretation of sensations; expectancy of panic/embarrassment).
Up to 2 marks: Clear application to the scenario (buses/public transport; repeated avoidance generalises and maintains fear).
