Risk factors

These factors may increase your risk of specific phobias:

• Your age. Specific phobias can first appear in childhood, usually by age 10, but can occur later in life.
• Your relatives. If someone in your family has a specific phobia or anxiety, you're more likely to develop it, too. This could be an inherited tendency, or children may learn specific phobias by observing a family member's phobic reaction to an object or a situation.
• Your temperament. Your risk may increase if you're more sensitive, more inhibited or more negative than the norm.
• A negative experience. Experiencing a frightening traumatic event, such as being trapped in an elevator or attacked by an animal, may trigger the development of a specific phobia.
• Learning about negative experiences. Hearing about negative information or experiences, such as plane crashes, can lead to the development of a specific phobia.