Explanation

• Behavioural approach - explanation

  • behaviourists believe that all behaviours are learnt through experience via the process of conditioning.
  • phobias are acquired (learnt in the first place) because of classical conditioning, they are maintained due to operant conditioning.
  • known as the dual process model. (Mowrer, 1960)
• Classical conditioning

  • learning through assosciation
  • phobias are the result of a negative experience with a feared object
  • whatever the phobia, the conditioned response (CR) is always going to be fear
• Watson and Rayner (1920)

  • aimed to see if emotional responses such as fear could be conditioned
  • used an 11 month year old baby called Albert
  • shown a white rat ( NS ) and at the same time a hammer hits an iron bar behind his head (UCS)
  • Albert jumped and put his head in the mattress - fear (UCR)
  • this was repeated several times over the next week
  • the rat is then shown without the iron bar and without the sound
  • Albert responded with fear
  • the rat has become a conditioned stimulus and elicits a conditioned response
• Operant conditioning - how phobias are maintained

  • learning through consequences
  • a behaviour that is rewarding will be reinforced which means it is likely to be repeated
  • negative reinforcement - individual avoids an unpleasant situation - in the case of phobias, the phobic stimulus reduces fear and this reinforces avoidance behaviour
• A03 - Supporting evidence

  • Watson and Rayner
  • showed stimulus and response link
• A03 - Value

  • the same principles can be used to unlearn phobias using counterconditioning techniques based on classical conditioning
  • systematic desensitisation is the most successful treatment for phobias and this lends support to the behaviourist explanation
• A03 - Limitaion

  • incomplete explanation
  • does not take into account other factors such as cognitive
  • not everyone who experiences trauma will develop a phobia
• A03 - Limitation

  • the dual process model also ignores the influence of nature and evolution
  • sometimes people develop a phobia of things that they have had no direct or indirect experience of and this can be explained by evolutionary theory
  • according to this, a phobia is something that has evolved over time where our ancestors may have been under threat from snakes or spiders, therefore people who feared these things are more likely to survive
  • thus there are other factors that can account for phobias