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The word “phobia” has a late Latin root stemming from the Greek word “phobos” meaning fear. Many different types of phobias exist today and have existed for centuries. From the fear of snakes to the fear of mailboxes, phobias can have a powerful influence on human behavior. Many behaviorists that have worked with phobias have developed theories about the causes and patterns of phobias, but is it possible for people to overcome their phobia? There are four main types of learning; classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning, and the cognitive approach. Classical conditioning is where associations are made between a natural stimulus and a learned, neutral stimulus. Classical conditioning was first demonstrated by a physiologist named Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900’s. Through his experiments with dogs, Pavlov ascertained that a dog would salivate at the sight of an experimenter who was fed it, whether or not the experimenter actually had any food to feed to the dog. Pavlov noted that the dog associated the experimenter with the food. These findings would heavily influence the work of future behaviorists. One such behaviorist was John B. Watson. Watson conducted many experiments, but his most fa