AO1: Behavioural approach to explaining phobia

• Two-way process model: Acquisition (classical conditioning) and maintenance (operant conditioning)
• Phobias: Behavioural

  What you can see: panic, avoidance, endurance
• Phobias: Emotional

  How they feel: anxiety, unreasonable emotional responses
• Phobias: Cognitive

  What they think: selective attention, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions.
• The phobia is first learnt through classical conditioning (acquisition) and then maintained through operant conditioning.
• Classical conditioning and fear acquisition- Concept

  Acquired through trauma
• Classical conditioning and fear acquisition- Process

  Phobia comes through association with a traumatic event.
• Classical conditioning and fear acquisition- Little Albert

  Once conditioning has taken place, it can be generalised to similar scenarios. Little albert was conditioned to fear white rats, his fear could be generalised to cotton wool, a santa mask, and a fur coat.
• Operant conditioning and maintenance of phobia

  The key is anxiety avoidance. Reinforced behaviour tends to increase its frequency. Phobias lead to negative reinforcement through anxiety avoidance.
• Avoiding phobic situations leads to escaping the anxiety we would have faced if we remained in the situation. For example: sleeping with the light on lowers anxiety- you are motivated to do this again.
• The more you reinforce a behaviour, the worse it gets.