Fear of flying in civil airline passengers: a manifold phenomenon with various motivational roots

Abstract: This thesis comprises four papers reporting results from a project studying the fear of flying phenomenon. Paper I is an evaluation study of a new percept-genetic instrument, the Flight Situation Test (FST). A group of 24 subjects with a fear of flying (FoF) and 19 controls (non-FoF) were tested. The test instrument turned out to be valuable in pinpointing differences between the groups, and was included in the test battery of the main study. Paper II-IV report results from the main study comprising 64 FoFs and 50 non-FoFs. Paper II presents a prevalence study based on 2239 inquiries showing that 36% of the population experience at least some unease in a flying situation and 8% suffer from a pronounced fear reaction.Based on a deep-interview the paper also provides a description of the FoF passengers' personality and individual experience of the flying situation. In paper III the personality of the FoF person is approached by percept-genetic techniques. By the Flight Situation Test (FST) the subjects were confronted with a representation of the flying situation and, by the Defense Mechanism Technique modified (DMTm), the psychological functioning when facing threat of another kind was covered. In paper IV the non-FoF group is left aside and the manifoldness of the fear of flying phenomenon is approached by identifying subgroups among 64 fearful airline passengers. Five groups with clear differences in psychological functioning were identified by a cluster analysis, based on percept-genetic test data from the Flight Situation Test (FST), the Spiral Aftereffect Technique (SAT) and the Defense Mechanism Technique modified (DMTm). As a second step of the analysis the clusters were related to interview data, revealing various sources to the fear. The fear reaction turned out to be founded either in death anxiety, in a feeling of helplessness, a technical apprehension or that the flight situation reminds of another disagreeable situation or memory.