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Upper middle and upper class Trinidadians are equally though differently entangled in the effects of global, regional and local processes of crime, risk and fear as their counterparts from lower classes. A recent rapid increase in violent crime and particularly a five-fold increase in murder rates in under ten years has caused a shift in lifestyle patterns and are imagining of social, public and private space in the country. Upper class groups conjure and employ an image of a classed and raced 'bad man' who is held responsible for increases in crime and gang violence and is the locus for anxieties for fears for personal safety and the future of the nation. My research shows that upper middle and upper classes increasingly assert, re-create and negotiate their class position with reference to changing informal rules of 'safe' behaviour and movement in reference to this conjured 'bad man'. Home spaces are created and fortified against those construed as 'risky'. Informal rules of appropriate 'safe' behaviour are negotiated and emerge through endless talk of crime. This talk re-imagines and reifies nearly all lower classes as 'risky' and the conclusions of this talk invariably lead to greater attempted isolation of upper classes from lower classes. National elections in 2007 and 2010 point to a potential long-term shift away from racialized voting patterns, even as racialized and classed stereotypes flourish. Recent successes of an ostensibly non-racial third political party point to new electoral paradigms and indicate that increases in crime and fear of crime supercede more simplistic racebased allegiances. A paradox, between upper class attempts at increased isolation from crime and continued re-imagining of markers of classed and racialized difference on the one hand, and a perhaps historic change in voting patterns away from long held notions of racial difference on the other hand weave throughout this dissertation and point to the ways in which understandings of risk and crime can influence social change. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The present study attempted to answer two general questions: (1) what is the relation between expected and actual reactions to a spider in individuals afraid of spiders? and (2) are inaccurate expectancies updated on the basis of experience? Behavioral and cognitive-behavioral learning models of fear, treatment protocols developed in relation to these, and recent findings from our laboratory necessitated answers to two additional questions: (3) does the expectation accuracy of individuals who meet DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis with a specific phobia differ from that of individuals who are fearful but do not meet criteria? and (4) does expectation accuracy vary as a function of context? Two final questions were obvious: (5) do the actual reactions of individuals who meet criteria for diagnosis differ predictably from those of fearful individuals? and (6) do reactions vary contextually? Student participants reported and tested a series of trial-specific expectancies about their reactions to a live, mechanical, or virtual tarantula over seven trials. Participants then completed three final trials in the presence of a live tarantula. Participants poorly anticipated the quality and intensity of their initial reactions, but expectation accuracy increased quickly. No clear tendencies for over- or under-prediction emerged. Participants updated expectancies in relation to prior trial expectation accuracy, either increasing or decreasing their predicted reactions relative to the original expectancy. Participants who met criteria for diagnosis with a specific phobia consistently anticipated and reported more intense reactions than did those who were fearful, but diagnostic status was not predictive of expectation accuracy. Participants in the live and virtual spider groups reported similar levels of fear that were greater than those in the mechanical spider group. Participants in the virtual spider group more readily reduced the distance maintained between themselves and the spider stimulus than did those in the live or mechanical spider groups. Expectation accuracy did not vary contextually. Results are discussed in light of the theoretical models presented, with findings lending greater support to behavioral models of fear learning relative to cognitive models that postulate a substantial role for conscious processing and appraisal in specific fear. Practical recommendations are made to researchers and clinicians based on present findings.

This study investigated whether contingent-anxious conditioned stimulus termination was more important than temporally yoked termination in producing conservation or enhancement of learned fear. Thirty psychology students, twenty-six females and four males, were administered item thirty-nine from the Fear Survey Schedule and an avoidance test. After in vivo treatment exposure to a harmless snake, post-test measures identical to pretests revealed that contingent-anxious subjects retained significantly more fear (p <.05) on both indexes than temporally yoked subjects. No enhancement was found and only on the subjective measure did contingent-anxious subjects show fear conservation when contrasted with no-treatment controls (p >.05). Implications for "implosive" therapies were discussed.

Fear generalization, the generalization of fear to innocuous stimuli, is a characteristic component of pathological anxiety. For example, after returning from war, a person might begin to experience fear in response to the sound of fireworks, a stimulus typically regarded as safe. When excessive, “overgeneralization” serves as a core feature of fear and anxiety-related disorders, such as PTSD. The present collection of studies sought to investigate the neural correlates and temporal dynamics of fear generalization in humans. The first study sought to investigate the causal role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus in the generalization of fear. Contrary to hypotheses, individuals with focal damage to the vmPFC (N=8) or hippocampus (N=12) did not demonstrate significantly increased fear generalization relative to individuals with brain damage outside of these regions (N=16) or normal comparison participants (N=20). Potential explanations for this finding are explored. The second study sought to investigate the time course of fear generalization in humans. Participants (N = 107) completed a fear generalization task over the course of two sessions. Results indicate that fear generalization significantly increased as the duration of time between training and testing increased. This suggests that a stimulus may elicit a generalized fear response at one arbitrarily selected time point, but not another. This study establishes a novel paradigm that can be used in future work to investigate changes in the neural correlates of fear generalization over time. Fear generalization is found across an array of anxiety disorders, making it a compelling area of study. The present work highlights the dynamic nature of fear generalization in humans. Further, the present study leads to a number of questions for future research.