Every time people are faced with a task whose results have important consequences for them (such as an exam or a job interview), some of them carry out rituals or cover themselves with amulets that “attract good luck and/or ward off to bad luck” and/or avoid what is culturally established to be associated with bad luck.
Although some of these rituals are very personal, the truth is that culture has also provided us with some that we still maintain today. This is the case of the color yellow, a color that we avoid in the situations described above because we think that “it attracts bad luck.” Did you know that the fear of the color yellow is called xanthophobia? Continue reading this Psychology-Online article in which we talk about Xanthophobia: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment.
What is xanthophobia
Xanthophobia refers to excessive and irrational fear of the color yellow, which causes the person to reject said color. Although it is true that the definition is not very specific, a priori we understand that rejection occurs in the face of any object that is or contains the color yellow.
Does xanthophobia exist? Is it a mental disorder? It would be if it met the criteria for specific phobia of the main diagnostic classifications DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association) or ICD-11 (World Health Organization). According to these criteria, it would not be enough for the person to feel excessive fear, but rather for this would negatively interfere with life daily life of the patient.
Xanthophobia has not received much attention in the scientific literature, probably because it is a rare problem among the population. It would be even more complicated to find people diagnosed with xanthophobia considering this as a specific phobia.
Yes, it is more common to treat the rejection of the color yellow as a superstition. In this sense, the rejection would occur above all to yellow clothing, since there are people who associate this color with bad luck, without, of course, scientific evidence in this regard.
Symptoms of xanthophobia
People diagnosed with simple phobia show symptomatology that covers the cognitive, physiological and motor areas. Therefore, if we consider xanthophobia as a specific phobia, following Sosa, CD and Capafóns, JI (2014), we can expect that people who suffer from it will show symptoms in the following areas:
- Cognitive area. People with xanthophobia think clearly and unequivocally that “the color yellow causes bad luck.” They will also present conditional beliefs like “if I wear yellow during my audition, it will surely look bad.”
- physiological area. Upon the appearance or anticipation of the feared stimulus, the patient will show physiological symptoms such as nausea, tachycardia, bradycardia, sweatingetc.
- TOmotor area. At a motor or behavioral level, the patient will try to avoid feared stimuli. In our case, and due to cultural heritage, we will avoid wearing yellow in situations such as a job interview, an audition, an exam, etc.
Causes of xanthophobia
The origin of the superstition regarding the color yellow is related to the world of theater. The legend about Molière, a French playwright, maintains that he died on stage dressed in yellow.
The cognitive behavioral theory for the development and maintenance of phobias indicates that phobias originate through classical conditioning, i.e. Fear develops when associating the color yellow with another aversive stimulus (in this case, it is developed in Molière’s contemporaries, who associate this color with his death); and it is maintained through operant conditioning, that is, avoidance reinforces said behavior (people, following Molière’s death, begin to avoid wearing yellow on stage).
Now, how has this legend that originated in the 17th century been able to transcend into our daily lives? Fears can be learned through observing them in other people.. That is, if, for example, a child’s mother is very superstitious and is afraid of what is yellow and avoids it, the child can learn this fear and perform the same behaviors as her mother. This mechanism is called.
Xanthophobia treatment
How to treat xanthophobia? The treatment of choice for specific phobia is , which may be accompanied by pharmacological treatment (administration of anxiolytic drugs).
Within cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of specific phobia, the application of exposure technique. It consists of the patient’s prolonged exposure to the feared stimulus. For this presentation we must have well defined what this phobic stimulus is and, as we have seen, in the case of xanthophobia it would be necessary to specify which stimuli cause the anxious symptoms.
If we look at the definition of “irrational fear of the color yellow” we must point out that colors are stimuli to which people are continually exposed, which would make the development of this type of phobia difficult.
If we understand that xanthophobia refers, due to its origin, to wearing yellow in certain situations such as exams, tests or other situations that require “good luck”, the exposure would consist of, precisely, making the person wear this color in said situations. situations. In this way he would face the feared situation and verify that there is no relationship between his results and the color of the clothing.
Cognitive techniques can also be useful when deal with irrational beliefs and the attributions that can be made to the color yellow such as “the test went badly because I was dressed in yellow” (we attribute our “bad luck” or our negative result to the yellow color of our garment).
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to Xanthophobia: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatmentwe recommend that you enter our category.
References
- American Psychiatric Association (2014). DSM-5. Reference guide to the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5-Breviary. Madrid: Panamericana Medical Editorial.
- World Health Organization (WHO) (2018) International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision. Recovered from https://icd.who.int/es
- Sosa, CD and Capafóns, JI (2014) Specific phobia. En Caballo, VE, Salazar, IC and Carrobles, JA (2014) Manual of Psychopathology and Psychological Disorders. Madrid. Pyramid.