Xanthophobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment

  • Jul 26, 2021
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Xanthophobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment

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 they carry out rituals or wear amulets that "attract good luck and / or ward off bad luck" and / or avoid what is culturally associated with bad luck lucky.

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 the Xanthophobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment.

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Index

  1. What is xanthophobia
  2. Symptoms of xanthophobia
  3. Causes of xanthophobia
  4. Treatment of xanthophobia

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 the rejection occurs before 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 DSM-5 diagnostic classifications (American Psychiatric Association)[1] o ICD-11 (World Health Organization)[2]. According to these criteria, it would not be enough for the person to feel excessive fear, but rather that this would negatively interfere with life daily routine 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 it 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 mainly occur to yellow clothes, since there are people who associate said color to bad luck, without of course there being scientific evidence to respect.

Symptoms of xanthophobia.

People diagnosed with simple phobia show symptoms that encompass the cognitive, physiological and motor areas. Therefore, if we consider xanthophobia as a specific phobia, following Sosa, C.D. and Capafóns, J.I. (2014)[3] We can expect people with it to show symptoms in the following areas:

  • Cognitive area. People with xanthophobia clearly and unequivocally think that "the color yellow causes bad luck." They will also present conditional beliefs of the type "if I see yellow during my audition, it will surely go wrong".
  • Physiological area. Before the appearance or anticipation of the feared stimulus, the patient will show physiological symptoms such as nausea, tachycardia, bradycardia, sweating, etc.
  • Ámotor area. At a motor or behavioral level, the patient will try to avoid dreaded stimuli. In our case, and due to cultural heritage, he 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, that is, fear develops when yellow is associated with another aversive stimulus (in this case, it develops in Molière's contemporaries, who associate this color with his death); and is maintained through operant conditioning, that is, avoidance reinforces said behavior (People, following Molière's death, begin to avoid wearing yellow over the stage).

Now, how has this legend originating in the S. XVII to our day to day? Fears can be learned through observing them in other people. That is, if, for example, the mother of a child is very superstitious and is afraid of what she is of yellow color and avoids it, the child can learn this fear and perform the same behaviors as his her mother. This mechanism is called vicarious conditioning.

Treatment of xanthophobia.

How to treat xanthophobia? The treatment of choice for specific phobia is cognitive behavioral therapy, which may be accompanied by pharmacological treatment (administration of anxiolytic drugs).

Within cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of specific phobia, it is essential to apply the exposure technique. The psychological exposure technique It consists of the prolonged exposure of the patient to the feared stimulus. For this exposition we must have a clear definition of what this phobic stimulus is and, as we have seen, in the In the case of xanthophobia, it would be necessary to specify what stimuli are those that cause the symptoms anxious

If we pay attention to the definition of "irrational fear of the color yellow" we must point out that the colors are stimuli to which people are continuously exposed, which would hinder the development of this type of phobia.

If we understand that xanthophobia refers, by its origin, to wearing yellow in certain situations such as exams, tests or other situations that require "good luck", the exhibition would consist of, precisely, making the person see this color in said situations. In this way, he would face the dreaded situation and verify that there is no relationship between his results and the color of the clothes.

Cognitive techniques can also be helpful when it comes to treat irrational beliefs and the attributions that can be made to the yellow color of the type "the test has gone wrong for me to be dressed yellow ”(we attribute our“ bad luck ”or our negative result to the yellow color of our garment).

This article is merely informative, in 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 is it, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

References

  1. American Psychiatric Association (2014). DSM-5. Reference guide to the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5-Breviary. Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana.
  2. World Health Organization (WHO) (2018) International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision. Recovered from https://icd.who.int/es
  3. Sosa, C.D. and Capafóns, J.I. (2014) Specific phobia. In Caballo, V.E., Salazar, I.C. And Carrobles, J.A. (2014) Manual of Psychopathology and Psychological Disorders. Madrid. Pyramid.

Xanthophobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment

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