Phobias

• What is a phobia?


  A phobia is an irrational fear of ANY object/situation and is classed as an 'anxiety disorder'.
• What are the 3 types of phobias?

  Specific phobia: phobia of specific object/thing e.g. spiders

  
  

  Social anxiety phobia: phobia of social situations that involve people e.g. speaking to others

  
  

  Agoraphobia: phobia of being outside or in a place where they feel trapped with no way to escape e.g. crowds
• What is Mowrer's two-process model as part of the behavioural approach to explaining phobias?

  • Emphasises the role of learning in the acquisition of phobic behaviour
  • Stage one: classical conditioning (acquisition)
  • Stage two: operant conditioning (maintenance)
• How are phobias acquired via classical conditioning?

  We learn to associate something of which we have no fear of (neutral stimulus) with something that already triggers a fear response (unconditioned stimulus)
• What was Watson and Rayner's 1977 Little Albert experiment?

  • 9 month old baby Albert was exposed to a rat which he showed no anxiety to
  • Whenever rat was present, researchers made a loud frightening noise
  • Conditioned response was generalised to similar objects - Albert showed distress at other furry objects like fur coats and rabbits
• How are phobias maintained via operant conditioning?

  • Phobias are often long-lasting because of operant conditioning - where our behaviour is reinforced or punished
  • Mowrer suggests phobias are maintained through negative reinforcement
  • Whenever we avoid a phobic stimulus, we successfully escape a fearful and anxiety-provoking situation
  • Reduction in fear reinforces avoidant behaviour and the phobia is maintained
• What is a strength of the two-process model?

  • Supporting evidence: Little Albert study shows evidence for classical conditioning of phobias
  • Jongh et al. (2006) found that 73% of people with a fear of dental treatment had previous traumatic experiences involving dentistry
  • Confirms that an association between a stimulus and an unconditioned response leads to development of a phobia
  • HOWEVER not all phobias follow a bad experience - some people have phobias of snakes but live in populations where experiences with snakes are rare - shows association is not strong
• What is another strength of the two-process model?

  • Real-world application: has led to the development of exposure therapies such as systematic desensitisation and flooding
  • Concept of maintenance via operant conditioning is important in explaining why people benefit from exposure to the phobic stimulus
  • Once avoidance is prevented, it cannot be reinforced and so the phobia is cured
  • Shows the value of the two-process model
• What is a weakness of the two-process model?

  • Does not account for cognitive aspects of phobias
  • Explains behavioural aspects such as avoidance but ignores cognitive components like irrational beliefs
  • Shows two-process model does not completely explain the symptoms of phobias
• What did Seligman say about the two-process model?

  • Argued that all animals are genetically programmed to rapidly learn an association between fear and potentially life-threatening stimuli due to an increased risk in our ancestry
  • 'Ancient fears' - things that would have been dangerous in our evolutionary past like snakes
  • Explains phobic acquisition as just an adaptation to these ancient fears, providing a different explanation that the two-process model does not account for
• What is systematic desensitisation as a treatment of phobias? What is counterconditioning and reciprocal inhibition?

  • Behavioural therapy designed to gradually reduce phobic anxiety using classical conditioning
  • Counterconditioning: teaching patient a new response to the phobic stimulus by pairing it with relaxation over anxiety
  • Reciprocal inhibition: one emotion (relaxation) prevents the other (fear), becoming the new response
• What is the anxiety hierarchy?

  • Patient and therapist put together a list of anxiety-provoking situations related to the phobic stimulus arranged from least to most frightening
  • In vitro: imagination of exposure to phobic stimulus
  • In vivo: real-life exposure to phobic stimulus
• What is relaxation and exposure?

  • Patient is taught to relax as deeply as possible - can include breathing exercises, mental imagery techniques of relaxing situations, or drugs like valium
  • Patient is then exposed to phobic stimulus while in a relaxed state, starting from bottom of hierarchy and can only move up if they stay relaxed
  • Treatment is successful once patient can stay relaxed at the top of the hierarchy
• What is a strength of systematic desensitisation?

  • Evidence of effectiveness: Gilroy et al. followed up 42 people who had SD for a spider phobia - were less fearful of spiders than a control group who were only treated with relaxation
  • Wechsler et al. concluded SD is effective for all 3 types of phobias (specific, social, agoraphobia)
  • Shows it is likely to be helpful for people with phobias
• What is another strength of systematic desensitisation?

  • People with learning disabilities may struggle with cognitive therapies that require complex rational thought and could feel distressed by the traumatic experience of flooding
  • Means that SD is often the most appropriate treatment for people with learning disabilities that want to be cured of their phobias
  • Shows good accessibility for different types of people
• What is flooding as a treatment for phobias?

  • Being exposed to phobic stimuli WITHOUT a gradual build-up in an anxiety hierarchy
  • Relaxation techniques are developed but exposure is immediate
  • Only conducted in vivo
• How does flooding work?

  • Extinction: stops phobic responses quickly - without the option of avoidance the patient will quickly learn that the phobic stimulus is harmless
  • Patient can even achieve relaxation as they become exhausted by their own fear response
• What is a strength of flooding?

  • Highly cost-effective: can work in as little as one session as opposed to 10 sessions for SD to achieve the same result
  • Even one long session can make flooding more cost-effective
  • Means more people can be treated at the same cost with flooding than with other therapies - high clinical effectiveness
• What is a limitation of flooding?

  • Confronting one's phobic stimulus in such an extreme form provokes tremendous anxiety
  • Schumacher et al. found that both patient and therapists rate flooding as significantly more stressful than SD
  • Attrition (dropout) rates are also higher than for SD
  • Suggests that overall therapists may avoid using this treatment
• How is symptom substitution a weakness of flooding?

  • Flooding only masks symptoms and does not tackle the underlying causes of phobias
  • Persons reported the case of a woman with a phobia of death that was successfully treated with flooding - but as her phobia of death went away her fear of criticism became worse
  • Shows that flooding may be an inadequate treatment for phobias as a whole