Behaviourist- Explaining Phobias

• A phobia is an irrational fear of a specific object or situation. (excessive fear/anxiety)
• Behavioural characteristics:

  1. Avoidance - Unless person is making conscious effort to face fear, they try and prevent coming in contact with phobic stimulus, making it hard to go about daily life (plane)
  2. Panic - May panic in response to presence of phobic stimulus (screaming, crying or running away)
  3. Endurance - Sufferer remains in presence of phobic stimulus but continues to experience high anxiety (plane)
• Emotional characteristics:

  1. Disproportionate response - Emotional response in relation to phobic stimulus that goes beyond what is reasonable (intense fear from a tiny harmless spider)
  2. Anxiety - Unpleasant state of high arousal which prevents sufferer relaxing and makes it difficult to experience any pos emotion - can be long term
  3. Fear - immediate/extremely unpleasant response we experience when we encounter/think about phobic stimulus - intense but last for shorter periods than anxiety
• Cognitive characteristics:

  1. Selective attention to phobic stimulus - see it, hard to look away - keeping attention on something really dangerous gives best chance of reacting quickly to threat unless irrational
  2. Irrational beliefs- Unfounded thoughts in relation to phobic stimulus (I must always sound intelligent - pressure)
  3. Cognitive distortions - Sufferers perception of phobic stimulus my be distorted, inaccurate and unrealistic
• Mowrer's two-process model suggests that phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and then continue because of operant conditioning.
• Watson and Rayner created a phobia of a rat in a 9 month old boy called Little Albert. Initially, he showed no fear of the rat. However when the rat was presented they made a loud frightening noise with an iron bar close to Albert's ear. This caused albert to become afraid of the rat and his fear generalised to other furry objects.

  NS-rat UCS-loud noise UCR-fear CS-rat CR-startle response
• A phobic is likely to avoid an unpleasant situation which leads to a desirable consequence (pos reinforcer), and by escaping fear/anxiety is neg reinforced. Avoidance behaviour is reinforced and the phobia is maintained.
• S to explaining phobias:

  • Real world application in exposure therapies - systematic desensitisation
  • Many phobias can be traced back to a frightening experience as so can be explained by Mower's 2-process model
• W of explaining phobias:

  • Bounton points out that it's easier to acquire a phobia of something which presents us with danger suggesting evolutionary factors are involved which the model fails to acknowledge. Seligman called this biological preparedness - an innate predisposition to fear snakes, spiders and heights which pose as a risk