Phobias

• phobias is an excessive irritational fear and anxiety disorder which interferes with daily living causing the person to avoid the feared object or situation
• emotional effects of phobias is anxiety and unreasonable fear
• behavioural effects of phobias is panic, avoidance and endurance
• cognitive effects of phobias are selective attention, irrational beliefs and cognitive distortion
• the behaviourist approach explains phobias through classical and operant conditioning
• classical conditioning as an explanation for phobias:

  -neutral stimuli (object)

  -unconditioned stimuli (loud noises, being attacked ect,) which produces and unconditioned response (fear)

  -object becomes conditioned stimuli and produces conditioned response (fear) phobia is created
• we produce the unconditioned response as a survival instinct
• operant conditioning within phobias:

  -positive reinforcement (rewarded when displaying phobia e.g comfort)

  -negative reinforcement (removing the consequence of anxiety) by avoiding phobia

  -punishment (removing the behaviour) by facing the phobia
• mowers presented the two factor theory of phobias. that they are acquired through classical conditioning but maintained through operant conditioning
• supporting evidence ao3 for explanations of phobias:

  -real world application in exposure therapies

  -evidence for link between bad experiences and phobias (little albert)

  -Ad De Jongh: found 73% of people with fear of the dentist had a traumatic experience compared to control group with low anxiety where only 21% had traumatic experience
• limiting evidence for explaining phobias ao3:

  -not all phobias appear following a bad experience. unconditioned stimulus in little albert leads to fear automatically. some fears are due to innate biological traits

  -not all bad experiences lead to phobias

  -ignores other factors that may play a role in development of phobias-is reductionist

  -some phobias can be due to imitating others

  -does not account for cognitive aspect of phobias
• treatments for phobias: systematic desensitisation-

  behavioural therapy designed to gradually reduce phobias through the presence of classical conditioning. essentially, a new response to the phobic stimulus is learnt
• three processes on systematic desensitisation:

  1.anxiety hierarchy-patient and therapist create a list of situations relating to the phobic stimulus arranged from least to most frightening

  2. relaxation-therapist teaches patient to relax as deeply as possible (breathing ect.) cannot be afraid and relaxed at the same time so one emotion prevents the other (reciprocal inhibition)

  3.exposure-patient is exposed to first situation on list whilst relaxed. move up each time if they can stay relaxed. takes place over many sessions
• strengths of systematic desensitisation ao3:

  -Gilroy et al: followed up 42 patients who had SD for spider phobia in three 45 min sessions. at both 3 and 33 months SD group were less fearful then control group treated by relaxation without exposure

  -appropriate for diverse range of patients e.g learning disability
• limitations of systematic desensitisation ao3:

  -time consuming and costly as has to be done over a range of sessions

  -symptom substitution (only masks symptoms and does not tackle underlying causes
• treatments for phobias-flooding:

  Flooding involves immediate exposure to the phobia stimulus in a frightening situation. it stops phobias very quickly as without the option of avoidant behaviour the patient learns the phobic stimulus is harmless. in classical conditioning this is called extinction as the conditioned stimulus is encountered without the unconditioned stimulus no longer produces the conditioned response
• strengths of flooding ao3:

  -cost effective as can work in as little as one session
• limitations of flooding ao3:

  -ethical safeguards must obtain fully informed consent

  -very traumatic, Schumacher et al: found pps and therapists rated flooding as significantly more stressful than SD

  -higher dropout rates

  -less effective for more complex phobias as these are caused by irrational thinking

  -symptom substitution