Phobias

• What is the difference between a fear and a phobia?

  A fear is a response to a stimulus which would unsett;e MOST PEOPLE such as a horror film- and when a fear becomes excessive or irrational disrupting our ability to function is a phobia
• classical conditioning- explaining acquisition of phobias

  • learning by association
  • a phobia is created if you associate that object with a fearful or unpleasant experience
  • for example
  • UCS is the experience the UCR is the fear the NS is what caused the experience CS is that aswell and CR is the fear
  • stimulus generalisation- may occur when a CR is extended to all spiders not just that one you had a bad experience with
• classical conditioning example- phobias

  A neutral stimulus such as a spider is paired with an unconditioned response that is natural scary, leading the spider to become a conditioned stimulus and produces conditioned response of being scared
• operant conditioning - explaining acquisition of phobias

  • learning by consequences
  • if you are afraid of something you will take steps to avoid exposing yourself to it, and AVOIDANCE is negative reinforcement which reinforces the phobia
  • also if people show concern the fear is positively reinforced as it adds something pleasant
• social learning theory- explaining acquisition of phobias

  • believe that phobias are a learned response from watching others such as your parents- especially if they are of same sex
  • common phobias such as a fear of clowns are observed and imitated from role models in films
• maintenance of phobias- classical conditioning

  • when a person learns a fearful association between two variables it could be that even thinking about shopping causes the fearful response so the association is strengthened
  • Watson and Rayner 1930 demonstrate how this happens
• maintenance of phobias- operant conditioning

  • the law of effect- rewarded behaviour is repeated
  • negative reinforcement ie. avoidance maintains the phobia as it removes the anxiety, increasing chances of future avoidance
• maintenance of phobias- social learning theory

  • phobias are maintained by a role model adopting avoidance
  • this is then imitated by the person such as a child observing their mother avoiding something
  • leading to the child adopting this avoidance themselves
  • reproducing the fearful response
• what is a strength and weakness of classical conditioning as an explanation for phobias?

  Good explanation of acquring a phobia as Dollinger found that child survivors of lightning strikes showed an immense fear of thunder compared to control group.

  However, does not fully explain how phobias are maintained
• what is a strength and weakness of explaining phobias using operant conditioning ?

  Explains how reinforcement can maintain a phobia through avoidance. But it doesn't explain acquisition very well - Hekmat found only 23% with animal phobias reported direct conditioning experiences, therefore a different method generated the phobia.
• what are the strengths and weaknesses of social learning theory for explaining phobias?

  Can explain how the acquisition of phobias is through observed role models which links to universal phobias that people learn from observing others responses. But this explanation doesn't account for phobias that aren't observable in the environment