Many people report having a phobia for snakes even though they have never been exposed to a snake. this fear is an example of

Answer

It is an example of fear preparedness

Explanations

Preparedness fear means that fear-relevant stimuli are normally early prepared for safety-signaling. For example, the skin conductance responses are conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli. In this case, a phobia connected to survival such as snakes is common and much easy to induce than other types of fears.