behavioural explanation for phobias

• Specific phobia- phobia of an object such as an animal or body part, or a situation, such as flying or injections.

  Social anxiety- phobia of a social situation such as a public speaking.

  Agoraphobia- phobia of being outside or in a public place.
• Behavioural characteristics:

  Panic- a phobic person may panic in response to the presence of a phobic stimulus

  Avoidance- when the sufferer tends to go to effort to avoid coming into contact with the phobic stimulus.

  Endurance- when a sufferer remains in the presence of the phobic stimulus but continues to feel high anxiety levels. This can be them trying to face their fear.
• Emotional characteristics:

  Anxiety- an unpleasant state of high arousal

  Unreasonable emotional responses- exaggerated reactions compared to what the phobic stimuli actually is.
• Cognitive characteristics:

  Selective attention to the phobic stimulus- when the phobic stimuli is all the sufferer can focus on.

  Irrational beliefs- having these beliefs puts pressure on the sufferer to feel as if tnhey have to perform well.

  Cognitive distortions- the sufferers perceptions of the stimulus may be distorted compared to the ‘normal view’.
• The behavioural approach emphasizes the role of learning in the acquisition of behaviour. Mowrer proposed the two-process model based on the behavioural approach to phobias. It states that phobias are acquired by classical conditioning and then continues through operant conditioning.
• Acquisition by classical conditioning

  The process of learning to associate something we initially have no fear of (neutral stimulus) with something that already triggers a fear response (unconditioned stimulus).
• Little Albert- classical conditioning of a phobia:  

  Shown a rat (neutral stimulus) + loud bang noise (unconditioned stimulus)

  The loud lang already creates fear (unconditioned response)

  This pairing was repeated over time, until Albert learned to associated the rat with a fearful feeling e.g. fear of rats

  Shown a rat (conditioned stimulus) à fear (conditioned response)
• Maintenance by operant conditioning

  Responses acquired by classical conditioning usually tend to decline over time. However phobias are often long lasting.  Operant conditioning takes place when our behaviour is reinforced or punished. This reinforcement can be positive (gives) or negative (takes) and both encourage the behaviour to happen again.
• Mowrer suggested that whenever we avoid a phobic stimulus we successfully escape the fear and anxiety that we would have suffered if we had remained there. This reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour and so the phobia is maintained. (negative reinforcement)
• Good explanatory power

  The theory explained how phobias could be maintained over time which has important implications for therapies because it explains why patients may need to be exposed to their feared stimulus. Once a patient is prevented from practicing their avoidance behaviour, the behaviour ceases to be reinforced so it declines. Therefore a strength of the theory is that the two-way process can be applied to therapy and has real-life value.
• Alternative explanation for avoidance behaviour

  A weakness of the two-process model is that there is challenging evidence to suggest that at least some avoidance behaviour appears to be motivated more by positive feelings of safety. E.g. people may not be actively avoiding their phobia but just staying where they feel safe. This evidence suggests that the theory may not be the correct explanation for avoidance behaviour.
• A weakness of the theory is that although classical and operant conditioning can be accepted as involved with the development and maintenance of phobias there are some aspects that require further explaining. Evolutionary factors probably have a role in phobias but the 2-process theory doesn’t mention this such as there are phobias people have that although they aren’t, now would have been a threat at some point in the past for humans. This is recognised as biological preparedness which isn’t accounted for in the theory and therefore the 2-process theory can only be a partial explanation.