AO3 Explanations Behaviourism + Phobias

• What research support is there to support behavioural explanation of phobias?

  The Little Albert Experiment
• Who conducted the Little Albert Experiment?

  Watson and Raynor
• What was the procedure of the Little Albert Experiment?

  Conditioned Little Albert to fear white rats by presenting a loud noise every time he sees the rat
• The Theory of Natural Selection is an alternative explanation to the development of phobias
• Darwin argued that genetically determined characteristics or behaviour that enhance our chances of survival and reproduction would be passed on to the next generation and become more common in a population
• Seligman (1970) explains that we all have a biological preparedness to rapidly associate life-threatening stimuli and fear (heights, snakes, dark) which stem from our ancestors. This would have been an adaptive trait to promote survival.
• Who found that mice can inherit fears?

  Dias and Ressler (2013)
• What was the procedure of Dias and Ressler’s study?

  Mice were conditioned to fear the smell of cherry blossom whilst given electric shocks
• Dias and Ressler found that offspring who had never experienced the smell showed increased sensitivity (shuddering/startled) when introduced to the smell
• What does the behavioural approach ignore?

  Cognition (irrational thinking)

  Does not acknowledge that CBT can be successfully use to treat social phobias
• What can cause phobias that the behavioural approach disregards?

  Faulty thinking process
• The behavioural approach only focuses on external behaviours, whereas phobias display cognitive characteristics such hyper vigilance, irrational beliefs and an awareness that their phobia being irrational.
• How does the behavioural approach have real life application?

  Development of therapy
• What type of therapies are based on the behavioural approach?

  Exposure therapy and systematic desensitising which help clients unlearn their phobias through counter conditioning. These are both effective forms of treatment