Behavioural Explanations for Phobia

• What is Phobia?

  An extreme fear of an object, animal, place etc
• What are some examples of Environmental phobia some people may have?

  Heights

  Storms

  Water
• What are some examples of Situational Phobia some people may have?

  Airplanes

  Elevators

  Enclosed Spaces
• What are the Behavioural Characteristics of Phobia

  Avoidance

  Panice
• What happens when a person shows the behavioural characteristic of avoidance when presented with a phobia?

  When they are presented with the cause of fear, the individuals immediate response is to avoid it
• What happens when a person shows the behavioural characteristic of panic when presented with a phobia?

  When the object or situation cannot be avoided, they get increased anxiety levels as they confront it.

  This leads to panic - Lack of control over fears
• What are the 2 types of conditioning behaviourist believe are associated with Phobia?

  Classical Conditioning

  Operant Conditioning
• How does classical conditioning explain phobia?

  Association.

  • Responses are involuntary reflexes
  • Stimuli is unfamiliar (novel)
  • Reflex follows stimulus
  • Association occurs despite the nature of the stimuli [Pleasure or Aversive].
• How is the strength of classical conditioning measured?

  By the strength of the conditioned response or speed.
• How does Operant Conditioning explain Phobia?

  Responses are voluntary.

  • Behaviours are novel.
  • The behaviour comes before the reward or punishment.
  • Pleasure [reward] leads to repetition.
  • Aversion [punishment] leads to extinction.
• How is the strength of Operant Conditioning measured?

  Rate of behavioral changes.
• How are phobias learnt and how are they maintained?

  Phobias are learnt through Classical conditioned and maintained through Operant conditioning
• What does the Two-Process Model suggest?

  Every behaviour is learned through 2 processes.
• Who was the first researcher to apply the two - process model to phobia's?

  Mower 1947
• What is negative reinforcement in Phobia according to Operant Conditioning?

  Avoidance
• How is Phobia learnt through Association?

  • Pairing new stimuli with existing responses to create matched conditioned response.
  • This is a learned response fro stimulus that would normally produce this response.
• What does Environmental stimuli promote?

  Physiological Response
• What does Mower says happens to fear?

  It is generalised to other similar objects
• How does Classical Conditioning happen?

  Association between neutral and UCS to create a CR. It assumes experiences of traumatic event and generalises fear to other similar objects.
• Research Support - Watson and Rayner

  Little Albert:

  He was conditioned to have fear of white rats.

  Paired rats with loud noise = fear response to rat and similar stimuli

  Support that classical conditioning is involved in developing phobia.
• Evaluation of Watson and Rayner

  Unethical to condition a little kid to fear rats.

  Goes against the ethical guideline in psychology which states to protect participants from harm.

  • It also cannot explain irrational thoughts and active processes in the brain that happens along with developing phobia as it solely focuses on conditioning.
• Weakness of Behavioural Explanation of Phobias

  Cognitive Criticism

  Only using conditioning to explain phobia's leads to overlooking the possible role of cognition in phobias.

  • Awareness, Irrational thinking is an observable characteristics of phobias that are in line with the cognitive explanation.

  There must be an active process that is mediating between the stimulus and phobic response.
• What did DiNardo 1987 find?

  Not all phobias are a result of trauma.

  • Studied 37 female students (interviewed and assessed their fear of dogs).
  • Phobic respondents had a few dog based events in the past but more had negative expectation of events.
  • Exaggerated expectations of harm are factor for maintenance of phobia
• Weakness of Explanation

  Reductionist and Deterministic.