(A03) Behavioural Explanation Of Phobias

• Good explanatory power


  Two-process model is a definite step forward when proposed and went beyond Watson and Rayner's concept of classical conditioning
• Real life application of its explanatory power


  This had important implications for therapies as it explains why patients need to be exposed to feared stimulus. Once patient prevented from practising their avoidance behaviour, the behaviour ceases to be reinforced and thus declines
• Alternative explanation for avoidance behaviour

  Evidence suggesting that some avoidance behaviour appears to be more motivated by positive feelings of safety
• Patients with Agoraphobia


  Buck explains why some patients with agoraphobia can leave the house with a trusted individual with relatively little anxiety but not alone. This is a problem for the two-process model as it suggests avoidance is only motivated by anxiety reduction
• An incomplete explanation of phobias

  There are aspects of phobias that need further explaining. Bounton points out evolutionary factors have a vital role in phobias and that we have phobias of things that have been a source of danger in the evolutionary past like the dark or snakes
• Biological preparedness

  Seligman argued that we all have an innate predisposition to acquire certain fears- Biological preparedness. The two-process model does not explain this and that there is more to phobias than simple conditioning
• Phobias that do not follow trauma


  Sometimes phobias develop without having a bad experience - this questions the theory of conditioning
• What about the cognitive aspects of phobias?

  Two-process model explains maintenance of phobias in term of avoidance meaning it does not consider any cognitive explanations. This makes the behavioural approach explanation limited.It may be that the cognitive characteristics of phobias are a bi-product of its behavioural characteristics