Phobia acquisition and maintenance

• Acquisition through classical conditioning;

  1. Natural unconditional response of fear to an unconditional stimulus is paired with neutral stimulus
  2. The pairing can occur significantly once, or multiple times reinforcing the pairing
  3. Person will start to associate the fear response to the neutral stimulus making the person experience a conditioned fear responded to the conditioned stimulus
• acquisition through operant conditioning;

  1. person will get into negative situation which will cause an unpleasant consequence 
  2. person will avoid getting in the same situation, which will be rewarded by negative reinforcement 
  3. Phobia could be developed due to the continuous reinforcement of avoiding the negative situation
• Acquisition through social learning theory;

  1. Person will view a model having a fear reaction to a situation or object
  2. The models reaction may be repeated multiple times, reinforcing the behaviour
  3. Person may view model rewarding self for avoiding situation (operant conditioning negative reinforcement)
  4. Person will start to imitate behaviour motivated through vicarious reinforcement 
  5. Person will start to experience same satisfaction from avoiding situation 
• Maintenance of phobia through classical conditioning;

  • Persons phobia may be so strong that it is very hard top undo and therefore does not become extinct
• maintenance of phobia through operant conditioning;

  1. Person maintains phobia through negative reinforcement (avoiding phobia)
  2. negative reinforcement rewards person as the are not feeling the unpleasant feeling of fear
  3. Person repeatedly avoids phobic situation therefore reinforcing phobia through negative reinforcement
• Maintenance of phobia through Social learning theory;

  1. Person observes model maintaining phobia through operant conditioning (negative reinforcement)
  2. Person models behaviour reinforcing their phobia and maintaining through vicarious reinforcement