Behav. Res. Thu. Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 125-131,1992 Printed in Great Britain. All rightsreserved
OOOS-7967/92$5.00 + 0.00 Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press plc
COMPARISON BETWEEN FSS-II SCORES OF TWO GROUPS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS SAMPLED 15 YR APART ANDRBE LIDDELL
and
DAVID HART
Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada AlB 3X9 (Received
10 July 1991)
Summary-Undergraduate students were contacted in classes at Memorial University of Newfoundland during 1975 and asked to complete the FSS-II, on a voluntary basis; 5 11 students (232 male and 279 female subjects) provided enough data for analyses. In 1990, the same procedure was carried out, resulting in a comparable group of 359 students (161 male and 198 female subjects). Contrary to predictions, the 1990 students were more fearful than the 1975 group and the increase in fearfulness was contributed exclusively by women students. The component of fear contributing most to this increase related to social evaluation and violence.
INTRODUCTION
Geer’s (1965) Fear Survey Schedule-II items were selected by giving Ss an open ended questionnaire on which they were to list their fears. Instructions were given to list only fears that involved no actual danger or pain. A total of 111 fears were reported. The fears (51) which were reported more than once made up the FSS-II. The scale demonstrated high internal consistency reliability (r = 0.94 was estimated by applying the KR.20 formula). It was also found to correlate positively with personality inventories measuring emotionality or manifest anxiety and negatively with social desirability. Validation studies were carried out by conducting behavioral tests taking actual fear stimuli (i.e. dogs and rats), and asking Ss to approach them from a predetermined distance. Latency described as time (set) taken after the approach instruction was given and distance (inches) from fear stimulus were used as dependent variables in addition to subjective measures regarding the Ss’ feelings during the tests and the experimenter’s ratings of how they thought the S felt. Overt behavior was found to be consistent with the level of fear admitted to on the FSS-II. The available norms and subsequent data for the FSS-II were derived primarily from college students (Hersen, 1973). It is ironical to note that the original Fear Survey Schedule (the FSS-I of Akutagawa, 1956) was designed to test the construct validity of psychoanalytic concepts. Its author was unlikely to predict that there would develop so close an affinity between this type of assessment and behavior therapy. In fact, fear survey schedules proved to be one of the most widely utilized paper-and-pencil assessment devices for screening fearful individuals and for examining the therapeutic efficacy of behavioral treatments (Hersen, 1973; Masters, Burish, Hollon & Rimm, 1979). In a comprehensive review of the development of fear survey schedules for self-assessment of fear, Hersen (1973) explained that the reason the FSS-II postdated the FSS-III was that Geer had begun his initial work before the publication of the FSS-III. Unlike Geer (1965) Wolpe and Lang (1964) based the design of the FSS-III primarily on clinical experience. It consists of 75 items divided into the following subcategories: animal, tissue damage/illness, death or associated stimuli, classical phobias, social stimuli, noises, and miscellaneous others. A number of other fear schedules were subsequently devised by augmenting or combining existing schedules. Hersen’s (1973) evaluation of the literature revealed a number of consistent findings. Women reported more fears than men. Factor analytical studies of the various schedules showed considerable similarities but there were also some differences between the factors extracted when the scores of men and women were analyzed separately. More recently, Arrindell, Pickersgill, Bridges, Kartsounis, Mervyn-Smith, van der Ende and Sanderman (1987) confirmed that there was a great deal of overlap between the different fear survey 125
AND& LIDDELL and DAVIDHART
126
schedules available. For instance, they compared the initial FSS-III of Wolpe and Lang (1964) with a later 108-item version (Wolpe & Lang, 1977) and yet another 88-item variation (Wolpe, 1973). They found these three measures to have 75 items in common with 51 of them distributed across five robust factors: social fears, agoraphobic fears, bodily injury/death/illness fears, fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, and fears of harmless animals. Using the original FSS-III, they carried out a series of cross-national studies of university students’ fears. They demonstrated characteristic differences between the responses of British, American, and Dutch students. Arrindell and his collaborators pointed to the possible role of shared cognitions in each of the individual cultures represented to explain their findings. More specifically, when a culture is socially demanding with respect to any one of its values, its members are likely to perceive that aspect as more threatening than others and themselves as having less control over it. Kirkpatrick (1984), citing an unpublished study by Hajduch and Rose (1982) which showed college students from Los Angeles to be more fearful of earthquakes, sharks and landslides than students residing in northwestern Indiana, took account of differences in geographical locations within the same country to explain the different preoccupations of the students investigated. It should follow that demands can also be modified over time within the same culture. To test this, it was decided to compare FSS-II scores obtained by students from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1975 (Hart, 1975) with those of comparable students currently registered at the same institution. It was predicted that certain notable cultural changes, such as greater opportunities for women students than was the case 15 yr previously along with increased societal sensitivity to women’s issues, would results in a decrease in women students’ degree of fearfulness, a degree which would be closer to that of their male counterparts. It was also predicted that longer exposure in the province to a university that had increased dramatically in both size and complexity over the intervening 15 yr would be reflected in a general decrease in fearfulness. METHOD Undergraduate students were contacted in large classes at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1975 (Hart, 1975) and again in 1990 and asked if they would volunteer to complete the FSS-II anonymously. They were informed that the aim of the investigation was to study the distribution of students’ fears. The only demographic data requested on both occasions were sex and age. RESULTS Approximately 11% of the respondents returned incomplete questionnaires. The omissions appeared randomly distributed. Because of this and for ease of analysis, it was decided to discard the incomplete questionnaires. In 1975, 511 students (M = 232; F = 279) provided fully completed questionnaires; in 1991, 359 students (M = 161; F = 198) did likewise. There were more female respondents in both groups but the groups did not differ significantly in terms of their gender balance (x2 = 0.01, d.f. 1, NS). The mean of the ages of the 1975 group was 20.27 yr (SD = 2.62) and the mean of the ages of the 1990 ,group was 20.99 yr (SD = 3.62); the mode of the ages of both groups was 19 yr. Total FSS-II
scores
In accordance with (Geer, 1965), a score of 1 was assigned to the response ‘none’, and the values 2-7 were consecutively assigned to the points on the scale described as ‘very little’, ‘a little’, ‘some’, ‘much’, and ‘terror’. Scores obtained on each of the 51 items of the FSS-II were summed for each S and put into an ANOVA to test for the effect of group and sex on general fearfulness (Fig. 1). The alpha coefficient of the scale for this student population was 0.95. Contrary to prediction, the students tested in 1990 were more fearful than those who were tested in 1975 [F(l, 869) = 5.21, P < 0.051. However, the interaction of group by sex was also significant [F(l, 869) = 14.45, P < O.OOl],indicating that the increase in FSS-II scores was contributed by the female students [F(l, 869) = 190.24, P < O.OOl].
127
Comparison between FSS-II scores
190
Means
of
FSS-II scores
180
180 160
-B-
Male
-
Female
140 130 120
I
I
1976
1990
Time of assessment Fig. 1. Comparison of scores of students assessed in 1975 with those assessed in 1990.
Components of fear
Principal component factor analyses with varimax rotation were carried out on the FSS-II item scores for male and female students respectively. For male students, five factors accounting for 43.8% of the variance emerged: loss/death/injury, social, animals, water, and travel (Table 1). Female students showed five somewhat different factors which accounted for 44.8% of the variance. These factors were: social, loss/death/injury, water, ‘spooky’ items, and animals (Table 2). Items listed are those with loadings at or above the 0.50 criterion. Using MANOVAs, separate comparisons were carried out between same sex student groups on individual factor scores taken as dependent variables (Figs 2 and 3). The overall difference between the male students of 1975 and those of 1990 was significant [I;(S, 387) = 4.04, P < O.OOl]. Univariate analyses showed a significant decrease on two factors only, animal [F(l, 391) = 5.69, P < 0.021 and travel [F(l, 391) = 5.45, P < 0.021. With regard to the two groups of female students, the overall MANOVA difference on the five factors was also significant [F(5,471) = 15.11, P < O.OOl]with the 1990 female students scoring significantly higher than the others. Univariate analyses showed two factors to have increased significantly between the 1975 and 1990 groups, social [F(l, 475) = 35.44, P < O.OOl]and loss/death/injury [F(l, 475) = 40.98, P < 0.001). Extreme scores
Scores for items checked at either end of the scale (‘none’ and ‘terror’) were analyzed separately by a MANOVA taking these two categories of responses as dependent variables by group and sex (Fig. 4). The overall difference between men and women students on both extremes was significant [F(2,865) = 82.45, P < O.OOl].Univariate analyses showed women students to give significantly less ‘none’ responses [F(l, 866) = 117.73, P < O.OOl] and significantly more ‘terror’ responses [F(l, 866) = 81.19, P < O.OOl]than men. There was also an overall significant difference between the students of 1975 compared with those of 1990 when checking extreme categories [F(2,865) = 3.43, P c 0.051 but the univariate tests showed the significant difference to be for items checked ‘terror’ only [F(l, 866) = 6.87, P < 0.011. However, there was a significant sex by group overall interaction [F(2,865) = 8.25, P < O.OOl] but the univariate test showed a significant difference for the items checked ‘none’ only [F(l, 866) = 16.19, P < O.OOl].The results indicated that all students tested in 1990 admitted to more ‘terror’ than the students of 1975 but the women students of 1990 varied from their male counterparts by checking fewer items as ‘none’ while the males showed an increase of items checked similarly.
128
AND&
LIDDELL and DAVID HART
Table 1. Factor structure of FSS-II for males Factor
Table 2. Factor structure of FSS-II for females Factor loading
Item
1. Loss/injury Death of a loved one (27.1% of variance) Untimely or early death Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved ones Losing a job Mental illness Death Not being a success Suffocating Making mistakes II. Social (5.4% of variance) Meeting someone for the first time Being criticized Looking foolish Being misunderstood Being a leader Being self conscious Failing a test Being with member of opposite sex III. Animals Spiders (4.6% of variance) Snakes worms Rats IV. Water Boating (3.5% of variance) Deep water Swimming alone V. Travel Passenger in a plane (3.1% of variance) Passenger in a car
0.69 0.68 0.64 0.63 0.63 0.62 0.60 0.58 0.51 0.68 0.65 0.64 0.62 0.60 0.58 0.57 0.51 0.50 0.65 0.64 0.56 0.53 0.70 0.62 0.61 0.66 0.55
Factor
Factor loading
Item
1. Social Making mistakes (26.7% of variance) Being criticized Meeting someone for the first time Being self conscious Looking foolish Meeting authority Being a leader Being with member of opposite sex Not being a success Being misunderstood II. Loss/injury Untimely or early death (6.9% of variance) Auto accidents Death of a loved one Losing a job Death Illness or injury to loved one Boating III. Water (4.6% of variance) Swimming alone Deep water Thunderstorms Dead bodies IV. Spooky (3.6% of variance) BlOod Cemetaries Closed places V. Animals Snakes (3.0% of variance) Spiders Stinging insects Rats
worms
0.71 0.71 0.67 0.67 0.66 0.59 0.59 0.55 0.55 0.52 0.74 0.67 0.65 0.62 0.62 0.61 0.64 0.61 0.59 0.50 0.61 0.53 0.52 0.52 0.73 0.71 0.66 0.66 0.65
Items were ranked according to the frequency they received a rating of ‘terror’ from the male and female students of each of the periods investigated. The top 5 items ranked for each of the groups in question are shown in Table 3. DISCUSSION The most dramatic finding to emerge from this study was that women students not only admitted to being more fearful than men students but that the discrepancy between them had also increased over time. Gender differences regarding common fears has been the subject of much speculation. EANB OF FB8-II FACTOR WORE8
izz4 1976
loss/injury
social
animal
water
0
1990
travel
FACTORS Fig. 2. Comparison
of factor
scores between
male students in 1990.
assessed in 1975 and male students
assessed
Comparison between FSS-II scores MEAN8
OF FSII-fl
129
FACTOR SOORE
40
loss/inJury
sooial
‘spooky’
water
animal8
FACTORS Fig. 3. Comparison of factor scores between female students assessed in 1975 and female students assessed in 1990.
Since it is often deemed to be more socially acceptable for women to admit to fear than is the case for men who are expected to project a stronger image, one explanation advanced is that differences in self-reported fears may be due to biases in their reporting. If this were so, it would be necessary to explain why significant gender differences do not emerge before the approach of adolescence and why observational studies involving children’s parents confirm self-reported discrepancies in fearfulness (Marks, 1987). In an effort to rule out non-content response biases, Farley and Mealiea (1971) administered widely used measures of dissimulation and social desirability and the Wolpe Fear Survey Schedule (Wolpe & Lang, 1969) to a group of university students. They claimed that the validity of the fear inventory was not compromised by dissimulation and social desirability. Geer (1965) had also Means of items checked 201 1990
1676
16
0
Male
@
Female
-’
6 -’
None
Terror
Terror
None
Extremes of Scale Fig. 4. Comparison of extreme scores of students
assessed
in 1975 with those assessed in 1990.
AND&
130
LIDDELLand DAVID HART
Table3. FSS-IIitems ranked according to frequency of terror ratings given by male and female students
in 1975 and 1990 respectively
Male
Female
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Suffocating Untimely or early death Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved one
1975 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Untimely or early death Illness or injury to loved one Suffocating Speaking before a group
1990 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Snakes Suffocating Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved one Death of a loved one Untimely or early death Illness or injury to loved one Suffocating Death
reported a low negative correlation between the FSS-II and social desirability. The fact that men and women students alike increased their use of the ‘terror’ rating over the 15 yr of our study is further evidence against a simple gender bias explanation and the need for further consideration, The results of this study, like that of other studies of university students reviewed earlier, have revealed qualitative as well as quantitative differences when fear factors are extracted from FSS-II items. In our study, four out of the five factors extracted for each gender separately were largely equivalent. These were loss/death/injury, social, animals, and water. The loss/death/injury factor was made up of six identical items for both male and female students with two additional items for the males; the social factor (largely relating to social evaluation) had eight items common to both sexes with two items unique to the female group and one unique to the males; the animals factor had four common items and one unique to the women students; finally, the water factor had three common items with an additional one for women alone. It is interesting to note that ‘not being a success’ was part of the social component for the women students while it was part of the loss/illness/injury factor for the men. This was the only item, in our study, which loaded on different factors for men and women Ss respectively. It suggests that success (or failure to achieve it) is perceived differently by men and women students. Another observation worth noting is that the factor to account for most of the variance in the male Ss was loss/illness/injury while social accounted for the largest proportion of the variance for the women. This probably reflects the prevalence of different preoccupations between men and women students. These differences should be taken under consideration when counselling students. Fear of water has been less stable as a factor over different studies. For instance, Bernstein and Allen (1969) found it with women students alone but Liddell, Locker and Burman (1991) found it with men alone in an investigation of older non-university Ss. However, fear of water is particularly understandable in a Newfoundland context where respect for the dangers of turbulent North Atlantic waters and those of the numerous and often isolated ponds is essential to survival. The reasons for the appearance of the two unshared factors are not so readily explainable. These differences may suggest that women are more squeamish than men of certain items we have labeled ‘spooky’ and that men are more concerned than women when they travel as passengers rather than when they are in control. The separate gender comparisons made over time for each of the respective extracted factors invite speculations regarding the cultural changes affecting the students investigated. Contrary to prediction, women were more fearful in 1991 than in 1975 but this was not found to be uniform over the five factors. Fear of water, spooky items, and animals did not vary significantly but social and loss/illness/injury fears did. It appears that, while women are exercising greater freedom in selecting a wider range of educational, social, and career opportunities, they are also subjected to a wider range of threats than were predecessors. These are reflected in their increased concern with social evaluation and violence as portrayed by items represented in the loss/illness/injury factor. On the other hand, the reports of the male students groups supported our hypothesis by showing a general decrease in fearfulness. This decrease was only significant for travel and animals. It may be that greater exposure to traveling as passengers is now more common (particularly by plane) than it was 15 yr ago. However, the decrease in fears of animals does not have an obvious explanation and may be spurious.
Comparison between FSS-II scores
131
In an extensive review of the studies of self-reported fears carried out by Arrindell, Pickersgill, Merckelbach, Ardon and Cornet (1991), they concluded that, regardless of the characteristics of the populations surveyed, > 90% of all fear dimensions reported in the literature could be classified under four types, two of which were found universally-interpersonal events or situations and death, injuries, illness, blood and surgical procedures-followed by fears of animals and agoraphobia. This amply supports the repeated observations made by Eysenck (1987), Rachman (1990a), and Seligman (1971) that human fears are not randomly distributed. While the implication of biological determinism in the development of human fears has been difficult to test satisfactorily, a model which includes threat appraisal, perceived ability to cope, and controllability of events can explain some of the gender and cultural differences observed in ours and other similar studies including life span studies (Arrindell et al., 1987; Fitzpatrick, 1984; Liddell et al., 1991; Rachman, 1990b). There was a remarkable similarity between all our groups regarding the most feared items in that four out of five top rated items in each of the groups were identical. These items have common features in being particularly aversive (if not lethal), usually beyond the control of the individual who are unlikely to have developed skills to cope with them. In conclusion, our study is the first comparison of self-reported fears of different groups of university students attending the same university 15 yr apart. Contrary to predictions, the gender differences of FSS-II scores were increased rather than decreased over time. Some qualitative differences were also apparent as the result of factor analyses of the separate FSS-II items. Both qualitative and quantitative difference were ascribed to an interaction between the characteristics of the events and those of the Ss. REFERENCES Akutagawa, D. (1956). A study in construct validity of the psychoanalytic concept of latent anxiety and test of a projection distance hypothesis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Arrindell, W. A., Pickersgill, M. J., Merckelbach, H., Ardon, A. M. & Cornet, F. C. (1991). Phobic dimensions: III. Factor analytic study of common phobic fears; an updated review of findings obtained with adults subjects. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 13, 73-130.
Arrindell, W. A., Pickersgill, M. J., Bridges, K. R., Kartsounis, L. D., Mervyn-Smith, J., van der Ende, J. & Sanderman, R. (1987). Self-reported fears of American, British and Dutch students: A cross-national comparative study. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 9, 207-245.
Bernstein, D. A. & Allen, G. J. (1969). Fear Survey Schedule (II): Normative data and factor analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 7, 403-407.
Eysenck, H. J. (1987). The role of heredity, environment, and ‘preparedness’ in the genesis of neurosis. In Eysenck, H. J. & Martin, I. (Eds), Theoretical foundations of behavior therapy. New York: Plenum Press. Farley, F. H. & Mealiea Jr, W. L. (1971). Dissimulation and social desirability in the assessment of fears. Behavior Therapy, 2, 101-102. Geer, J. H. (1965). The development of a scale to measure fear. Behaviour Therapy, 3, 45-53.
Hajduch, C. & Rose, S. (1982). Comparing regional fears among college students. Unpublished manuscript, Purdue University, Calumet, Ind. Hart, D. (1975). A comparison of the fears of university students coming from a rural background with those of students coming from an urban one. Unpublished study, Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland. Hersen, M. D. (1973). Self-assessment of fear. Behavior Therapy, 4, 241-257. Kirkpatrick, D. R. (1984). Age, gender and patterns of common intense fears among adults. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 22, 141-150.
Liddell, A., Locker, D. & Burman, D. (1991). Self-reported fears (FSS-II) of subjects aged 50 years and over. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 105-l 12.
Marks, I. M. (1987). Fears, phobias, and rituals: Panic anxiety, and their disorders. New York: Oxford University Press. Masters, J. C., Burish, T. G., Holland, S. D. & Rimm, D. C. (1987). Behavior therapy: Techniques and empiricalfindings (3rd edn). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Rachman, S. (1990a). The determinants and treatment of simple phobias. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 12, l-30.
Rachman, Seligman, Wolpe, J. Wolpe, J. Wolpe, J.
S. J. (1990b). Fear and courage (2nd edn). New York: Freeman. M. E. P. (1971). Phobias and preparedness. Behavior Therapy, 2, 307-320. (1969). The practice of behavior therapy. New York: Pergamon Press. (1973). The pracfice of behavior therapy (2nd edn). New York: Pergamon Press. & Lang, P. J. (1964). A Fear Survey Schedule for use in behaviour therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy,
2, 27-30.
Wolpe, J. & Lang, P. J. (1969). Fear Survey Schedule. San Diego, Calif.: Educational and Industrial Testing Service. Wolpe, J. & Lang, P. J. (1977). Manualfor the Fear Survey Schedule. San Diego, Calif.: Educational and Industrial Testing Service.
OOOS-7967/92$5.00 + 0.00 Copyright 0 1992 Pergamon Press plc
COMPARISON BETWEEN FSS-II SCORES OF TWO GROUPS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS SAMPLED 15 YR APART ANDRBE LIDDELL
and
DAVID HART
Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada AlB 3X9 (Received
10 July 1991)
Summary-Undergraduate students were contacted in classes at Memorial University of Newfoundland during 1975 and asked to complete the FSS-II, on a voluntary basis; 5 11 students (232 male and 279 female subjects) provided enough data for analyses. In 1990, the same procedure was carried out, resulting in a comparable group of 359 students (161 male and 198 female subjects). Contrary to predictions, the 1990 students were more fearful than the 1975 group and the increase in fearfulness was contributed exclusively by women students. The component of fear contributing most to this increase related to social evaluation and violence.
INTRODUCTION
Geer’s (1965) Fear Survey Schedule-II items were selected by giving Ss an open ended questionnaire on which they were to list their fears. Instructions were given to list only fears that involved no actual danger or pain. A total of 111 fears were reported. The fears (51) which were reported more than once made up the FSS-II. The scale demonstrated high internal consistency reliability (r = 0.94 was estimated by applying the KR.20 formula). It was also found to correlate positively with personality inventories measuring emotionality or manifest anxiety and negatively with social desirability. Validation studies were carried out by conducting behavioral tests taking actual fear stimuli (i.e. dogs and rats), and asking Ss to approach them from a predetermined distance. Latency described as time (set) taken after the approach instruction was given and distance (inches) from fear stimulus were used as dependent variables in addition to subjective measures regarding the Ss’ feelings during the tests and the experimenter’s ratings of how they thought the S felt. Overt behavior was found to be consistent with the level of fear admitted to on the FSS-II. The available norms and subsequent data for the FSS-II were derived primarily from college students (Hersen, 1973). It is ironical to note that the original Fear Survey Schedule (the FSS-I of Akutagawa, 1956) was designed to test the construct validity of psychoanalytic concepts. Its author was unlikely to predict that there would develop so close an affinity between this type of assessment and behavior therapy. In fact, fear survey schedules proved to be one of the most widely utilized paper-and-pencil assessment devices for screening fearful individuals and for examining the therapeutic efficacy of behavioral treatments (Hersen, 1973; Masters, Burish, Hollon & Rimm, 1979). In a comprehensive review of the development of fear survey schedules for self-assessment of fear, Hersen (1973) explained that the reason the FSS-II postdated the FSS-III was that Geer had begun his initial work before the publication of the FSS-III. Unlike Geer (1965) Wolpe and Lang (1964) based the design of the FSS-III primarily on clinical experience. It consists of 75 items divided into the following subcategories: animal, tissue damage/illness, death or associated stimuli, classical phobias, social stimuli, noises, and miscellaneous others. A number of other fear schedules were subsequently devised by augmenting or combining existing schedules. Hersen’s (1973) evaluation of the literature revealed a number of consistent findings. Women reported more fears than men. Factor analytical studies of the various schedules showed considerable similarities but there were also some differences between the factors extracted when the scores of men and women were analyzed separately. More recently, Arrindell, Pickersgill, Bridges, Kartsounis, Mervyn-Smith, van der Ende and Sanderman (1987) confirmed that there was a great deal of overlap between the different fear survey 125
AND& LIDDELL and DAVIDHART
126
schedules available. For instance, they compared the initial FSS-III of Wolpe and Lang (1964) with a later 108-item version (Wolpe & Lang, 1977) and yet another 88-item variation (Wolpe, 1973). They found these three measures to have 75 items in common with 51 of them distributed across five robust factors: social fears, agoraphobic fears, bodily injury/death/illness fears, fears of sexual and aggressive scenes, and fears of harmless animals. Using the original FSS-III, they carried out a series of cross-national studies of university students’ fears. They demonstrated characteristic differences between the responses of British, American, and Dutch students. Arrindell and his collaborators pointed to the possible role of shared cognitions in each of the individual cultures represented to explain their findings. More specifically, when a culture is socially demanding with respect to any one of its values, its members are likely to perceive that aspect as more threatening than others and themselves as having less control over it. Kirkpatrick (1984), citing an unpublished study by Hajduch and Rose (1982) which showed college students from Los Angeles to be more fearful of earthquakes, sharks and landslides than students residing in northwestern Indiana, took account of differences in geographical locations within the same country to explain the different preoccupations of the students investigated. It should follow that demands can also be modified over time within the same culture. To test this, it was decided to compare FSS-II scores obtained by students from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1975 (Hart, 1975) with those of comparable students currently registered at the same institution. It was predicted that certain notable cultural changes, such as greater opportunities for women students than was the case 15 yr previously along with increased societal sensitivity to women’s issues, would results in a decrease in women students’ degree of fearfulness, a degree which would be closer to that of their male counterparts. It was also predicted that longer exposure in the province to a university that had increased dramatically in both size and complexity over the intervening 15 yr would be reflected in a general decrease in fearfulness. METHOD Undergraduate students were contacted in large classes at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1975 (Hart, 1975) and again in 1990 and asked if they would volunteer to complete the FSS-II anonymously. They were informed that the aim of the investigation was to study the distribution of students’ fears. The only demographic data requested on both occasions were sex and age. RESULTS Approximately 11% of the respondents returned incomplete questionnaires. The omissions appeared randomly distributed. Because of this and for ease of analysis, it was decided to discard the incomplete questionnaires. In 1975, 511 students (M = 232; F = 279) provided fully completed questionnaires; in 1991, 359 students (M = 161; F = 198) did likewise. There were more female respondents in both groups but the groups did not differ significantly in terms of their gender balance (x2 = 0.01, d.f. 1, NS). The mean of the ages of the 1975 group was 20.27 yr (SD = 2.62) and the mean of the ages of the 1990 ,group was 20.99 yr (SD = 3.62); the mode of the ages of both groups was 19 yr. Total FSS-II
scores
In accordance with (Geer, 1965), a score of 1 was assigned to the response ‘none’, and the values 2-7 were consecutively assigned to the points on the scale described as ‘very little’, ‘a little’, ‘some’, ‘much’, and ‘terror’. Scores obtained on each of the 51 items of the FSS-II were summed for each S and put into an ANOVA to test for the effect of group and sex on general fearfulness (Fig. 1). The alpha coefficient of the scale for this student population was 0.95. Contrary to prediction, the students tested in 1990 were more fearful than those who were tested in 1975 [F(l, 869) = 5.21, P < 0.051. However, the interaction of group by sex was also significant [F(l, 869) = 14.45, P < O.OOl],indicating that the increase in FSS-II scores was contributed by the female students [F(l, 869) = 190.24, P < O.OOl].
127
Comparison between FSS-II scores
190
Means
of
FSS-II scores
180
180 160
-B-
Male
-
Female
140 130 120
I
I
1976
1990
Time of assessment Fig. 1. Comparison of scores of students assessed in 1975 with those assessed in 1990.
Components of fear
Principal component factor analyses with varimax rotation were carried out on the FSS-II item scores for male and female students respectively. For male students, five factors accounting for 43.8% of the variance emerged: loss/death/injury, social, animals, water, and travel (Table 1). Female students showed five somewhat different factors which accounted for 44.8% of the variance. These factors were: social, loss/death/injury, water, ‘spooky’ items, and animals (Table 2). Items listed are those with loadings at or above the 0.50 criterion. Using MANOVAs, separate comparisons were carried out between same sex student groups on individual factor scores taken as dependent variables (Figs 2 and 3). The overall difference between the male students of 1975 and those of 1990 was significant [I;(S, 387) = 4.04, P < O.OOl]. Univariate analyses showed a significant decrease on two factors only, animal [F(l, 391) = 5.69, P < 0.021 and travel [F(l, 391) = 5.45, P < 0.021. With regard to the two groups of female students, the overall MANOVA difference on the five factors was also significant [F(5,471) = 15.11, P < O.OOl]with the 1990 female students scoring significantly higher than the others. Univariate analyses showed two factors to have increased significantly between the 1975 and 1990 groups, social [F(l, 475) = 35.44, P < O.OOl]and loss/death/injury [F(l, 475) = 40.98, P < 0.001). Extreme scores
Scores for items checked at either end of the scale (‘none’ and ‘terror’) were analyzed separately by a MANOVA taking these two categories of responses as dependent variables by group and sex (Fig. 4). The overall difference between men and women students on both extremes was significant [F(2,865) = 82.45, P < O.OOl].Univariate analyses showed women students to give significantly less ‘none’ responses [F(l, 866) = 117.73, P < O.OOl] and significantly more ‘terror’ responses [F(l, 866) = 81.19, P < O.OOl]than men. There was also an overall significant difference between the students of 1975 compared with those of 1990 when checking extreme categories [F(2,865) = 3.43, P c 0.051 but the univariate tests showed the significant difference to be for items checked ‘terror’ only [F(l, 866) = 6.87, P < 0.011. However, there was a significant sex by group overall interaction [F(2,865) = 8.25, P < O.OOl] but the univariate test showed a significant difference for the items checked ‘none’ only [F(l, 866) = 16.19, P < O.OOl].The results indicated that all students tested in 1990 admitted to more ‘terror’ than the students of 1975 but the women students of 1990 varied from their male counterparts by checking fewer items as ‘none’ while the males showed an increase of items checked similarly.
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LIDDELL and DAVID HART
Table 1. Factor structure of FSS-II for males Factor
Table 2. Factor structure of FSS-II for females Factor loading
Item
1. Loss/injury Death of a loved one (27.1% of variance) Untimely or early death Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved ones Losing a job Mental illness Death Not being a success Suffocating Making mistakes II. Social (5.4% of variance) Meeting someone for the first time Being criticized Looking foolish Being misunderstood Being a leader Being self conscious Failing a test Being with member of opposite sex III. Animals Spiders (4.6% of variance) Snakes worms Rats IV. Water Boating (3.5% of variance) Deep water Swimming alone V. Travel Passenger in a plane (3.1% of variance) Passenger in a car
0.69 0.68 0.64 0.63 0.63 0.62 0.60 0.58 0.51 0.68 0.65 0.64 0.62 0.60 0.58 0.57 0.51 0.50 0.65 0.64 0.56 0.53 0.70 0.62 0.61 0.66 0.55
Factor
Factor loading
Item
1. Social Making mistakes (26.7% of variance) Being criticized Meeting someone for the first time Being self conscious Looking foolish Meeting authority Being a leader Being with member of opposite sex Not being a success Being misunderstood II. Loss/injury Untimely or early death (6.9% of variance) Auto accidents Death of a loved one Losing a job Death Illness or injury to loved one Boating III. Water (4.6% of variance) Swimming alone Deep water Thunderstorms Dead bodies IV. Spooky (3.6% of variance) BlOod Cemetaries Closed places V. Animals Snakes (3.0% of variance) Spiders Stinging insects Rats
worms
0.71 0.71 0.67 0.67 0.66 0.59 0.59 0.55 0.55 0.52 0.74 0.67 0.65 0.62 0.62 0.61 0.64 0.61 0.59 0.50 0.61 0.53 0.52 0.52 0.73 0.71 0.66 0.66 0.65
Items were ranked according to the frequency they received a rating of ‘terror’ from the male and female students of each of the periods investigated. The top 5 items ranked for each of the groups in question are shown in Table 3. DISCUSSION The most dramatic finding to emerge from this study was that women students not only admitted to being more fearful than men students but that the discrepancy between them had also increased over time. Gender differences regarding common fears has been the subject of much speculation. EANB OF FB8-II FACTOR WORE8
izz4 1976
loss/injury
social
animal
water
0
1990
travel
FACTORS Fig. 2. Comparison
of factor
scores between
male students in 1990.
assessed in 1975 and male students
assessed
Comparison between FSS-II scores MEAN8
OF FSII-fl
129
FACTOR SOORE
40
loss/inJury
sooial
‘spooky’
water
animal8
FACTORS Fig. 3. Comparison of factor scores between female students assessed in 1975 and female students assessed in 1990.
Since it is often deemed to be more socially acceptable for women to admit to fear than is the case for men who are expected to project a stronger image, one explanation advanced is that differences in self-reported fears may be due to biases in their reporting. If this were so, it would be necessary to explain why significant gender differences do not emerge before the approach of adolescence and why observational studies involving children’s parents confirm self-reported discrepancies in fearfulness (Marks, 1987). In an effort to rule out non-content response biases, Farley and Mealiea (1971) administered widely used measures of dissimulation and social desirability and the Wolpe Fear Survey Schedule (Wolpe & Lang, 1969) to a group of university students. They claimed that the validity of the fear inventory was not compromised by dissimulation and social desirability. Geer (1965) had also Means of items checked 201 1990
1676
16
0
Male
@
Female
-’
6 -’
None
Terror
Terror
None
Extremes of Scale Fig. 4. Comparison of extreme scores of students
assessed
in 1975 with those assessed in 1990.
AND&
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LIDDELLand DAVID HART
Table3. FSS-IIitems ranked according to frequency of terror ratings given by male and female students
in 1975 and 1990 respectively
Male
Female
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Suffocating Untimely or early death Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved one
1975 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Untimely or early death Illness or injury to loved one Suffocating Speaking before a group
1990 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Death of a loved one Snakes Suffocating Auto accidents Illness or injury to loved one Death of a loved one Untimely or early death Illness or injury to loved one Suffocating Death
reported a low negative correlation between the FSS-II and social desirability. The fact that men and women students alike increased their use of the ‘terror’ rating over the 15 yr of our study is further evidence against a simple gender bias explanation and the need for further consideration, The results of this study, like that of other studies of university students reviewed earlier, have revealed qualitative as well as quantitative differences when fear factors are extracted from FSS-II items. In our study, four out of the five factors extracted for each gender separately were largely equivalent. These were loss/death/injury, social, animals, and water. The loss/death/injury factor was made up of six identical items for both male and female students with two additional items for the males; the social factor (largely relating to social evaluation) had eight items common to both sexes with two items unique to the female group and one unique to the males; the animals factor had four common items and one unique to the women students; finally, the water factor had three common items with an additional one for women alone. It is interesting to note that ‘not being a success’ was part of the social component for the women students while it was part of the loss/illness/injury factor for the men. This was the only item, in our study, which loaded on different factors for men and women Ss respectively. It suggests that success (or failure to achieve it) is perceived differently by men and women students. Another observation worth noting is that the factor to account for most of the variance in the male Ss was loss/illness/injury while social accounted for the largest proportion of the variance for the women. This probably reflects the prevalence of different preoccupations between men and women students. These differences should be taken under consideration when counselling students. Fear of water has been less stable as a factor over different studies. For instance, Bernstein and Allen (1969) found it with women students alone but Liddell, Locker and Burman (1991) found it with men alone in an investigation of older non-university Ss. However, fear of water is particularly understandable in a Newfoundland context where respect for the dangers of turbulent North Atlantic waters and those of the numerous and often isolated ponds is essential to survival. The reasons for the appearance of the two unshared factors are not so readily explainable. These differences may suggest that women are more squeamish than men of certain items we have labeled ‘spooky’ and that men are more concerned than women when they travel as passengers rather than when they are in control. The separate gender comparisons made over time for each of the respective extracted factors invite speculations regarding the cultural changes affecting the students investigated. Contrary to prediction, women were more fearful in 1991 than in 1975 but this was not found to be uniform over the five factors. Fear of water, spooky items, and animals did not vary significantly but social and loss/illness/injury fears did. It appears that, while women are exercising greater freedom in selecting a wider range of educational, social, and career opportunities, they are also subjected to a wider range of threats than were predecessors. These are reflected in their increased concern with social evaluation and violence as portrayed by items represented in the loss/illness/injury factor. On the other hand, the reports of the male students groups supported our hypothesis by showing a general decrease in fearfulness. This decrease was only significant for travel and animals. It may be that greater exposure to traveling as passengers is now more common (particularly by plane) than it was 15 yr ago. However, the decrease in fears of animals does not have an obvious explanation and may be spurious.
Comparison between FSS-II scores
131
In an extensive review of the studies of self-reported fears carried out by Arrindell, Pickersgill, Merckelbach, Ardon and Cornet (1991), they concluded that, regardless of the characteristics of the populations surveyed, > 90% of all fear dimensions reported in the literature could be classified under four types, two of which were found universally-interpersonal events or situations and death, injuries, illness, blood and surgical procedures-followed by fears of animals and agoraphobia. This amply supports the repeated observations made by Eysenck (1987), Rachman (1990a), and Seligman (1971) that human fears are not randomly distributed. While the implication of biological determinism in the development of human fears has been difficult to test satisfactorily, a model which includes threat appraisal, perceived ability to cope, and controllability of events can explain some of the gender and cultural differences observed in ours and other similar studies including life span studies (Arrindell et al., 1987; Fitzpatrick, 1984; Liddell et al., 1991; Rachman, 1990b). There was a remarkable similarity between all our groups regarding the most feared items in that four out of five top rated items in each of the groups were identical. These items have common features in being particularly aversive (if not lethal), usually beyond the control of the individual who are unlikely to have developed skills to cope with them. In conclusion, our study is the first comparison of self-reported fears of different groups of university students attending the same university 15 yr apart. Contrary to predictions, the gender differences of FSS-II scores were increased rather than decreased over time. Some qualitative differences were also apparent as the result of factor analyses of the separate FSS-II items. Both qualitative and quantitative difference were ascribed to an interaction between the characteristics of the events and those of the Ss. REFERENCES Akutagawa, D. (1956). A study in construct validity of the psychoanalytic concept of latent anxiety and test of a projection distance hypothesis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Arrindell, W. A., Pickersgill, M. J., Merckelbach, H., Ardon, A. M. & Cornet, F. C. (1991). Phobic dimensions: III. Factor analytic study of common phobic fears; an updated review of findings obtained with adults subjects. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 13, 73-130.
Arrindell, W. A., Pickersgill, M. J., Bridges, K. R., Kartsounis, L. D., Mervyn-Smith, J., van der Ende, J. & Sanderman, R. (1987). Self-reported fears of American, British and Dutch students: A cross-national comparative study. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 9, 207-245.
Bernstein, D. A. & Allen, G. J. (1969). Fear Survey Schedule (II): Normative data and factor analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 7, 403-407.
Eysenck, H. J. (1987). The role of heredity, environment, and ‘preparedness’ in the genesis of neurosis. In Eysenck, H. J. & Martin, I. (Eds), Theoretical foundations of behavior therapy. New York: Plenum Press. Farley, F. H. & Mealiea Jr, W. L. (1971). Dissimulation and social desirability in the assessment of fears. Behavior Therapy, 2, 101-102. Geer, J. H. (1965). The development of a scale to measure fear. Behaviour Therapy, 3, 45-53.
Hajduch, C. & Rose, S. (1982). Comparing regional fears among college students. Unpublished manuscript, Purdue University, Calumet, Ind. Hart, D. (1975). A comparison of the fears of university students coming from a rural background with those of students coming from an urban one. Unpublished study, Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland. Hersen, M. D. (1973). Self-assessment of fear. Behavior Therapy, 4, 241-257. Kirkpatrick, D. R. (1984). Age, gender and patterns of common intense fears among adults. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 22, 141-150.
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Marks, I. M. (1987). Fears, phobias, and rituals: Panic anxiety, and their disorders. New York: Oxford University Press. Masters, J. C., Burish, T. G., Holland, S. D. & Rimm, D. C. (1987). Behavior therapy: Techniques and empiricalfindings (3rd edn). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Rachman, S. (1990a). The determinants and treatment of simple phobias. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 12, l-30.
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S. J. (1990b). Fear and courage (2nd edn). New York: Freeman. M. E. P. (1971). Phobias and preparedness. Behavior Therapy, 2, 307-320. (1969). The practice of behavior therapy. New York: Pergamon Press. (1973). The pracfice of behavior therapy (2nd edn). New York: Pergamon Press. & Lang, P. J. (1964). A Fear Survey Schedule for use in behaviour therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy,
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Wolpe, J. & Lang, P. J. (1969). Fear Survey Schedule. San Diego, Calif.: Educational and Industrial Testing Service. Wolpe, J. & Lang, P. J. (1977). Manualfor the Fear Survey Schedule. San Diego, Calif.: Educational and Industrial Testing Service.
