Anxiety, according to Karen Horney (1937), is an overreaction to danger or a reaction to an imaginary or unrealistic danger. Anxiety is an emotional response to danger and is often accompanied by physical adverse reactions (Horney 1937). Anxiety in its definition is an emotional experience that elicits a physical and/or emotional reaction out of an individual. Anxiety has been shown to be a facto of neurosis (Horney 1937). Anxiety is linked with fear most of the time (Horney 1937). Anxiety can be shown in different ways depending on the person. Typically the person will get nervous, hot or sweaty, feel sick, become anxious, etc. (Horney 1937). However, the physical and mental outcomes of anxiety have an adverse impact on the individual. Anxiety and fear are closely related to each other in that they are both reactions to perceived danger. The difference between fear and anxiety is that fear is a response to …show more content…
Estes and Skinner (1941) defined anxiety as an emotional state that is related to fear that is paired with an upsetting stimulus that is responsible for the anxiety state of mind. Anxiety is also defined as the “anticipation of a future event” (Estes & Skinner 1941). Estes and Skinner (1941) did an experiment with rats in which they induced fear by putting the rats into an enclosed area and emitting a tone and a shock to the rat at the same time. Eventually, the rats came to associate the tone with the shock and experienced anxiety when waiting for the shock to occur. The anticipation of the shock encouraged the rats to press the bar or perform the desired task faster than they would have without the shock (Estes and Skinner 1941). Although Estes and Skinner (1941) tried to make the behavior or association of the tone and the shock extinct, their tries to do so did not work out well in most cases. Many of the rats showed spontaneous recovery after the behavior was seemingly extinct (Estes and Skinner