behavioural approach to explaining phobias

• the two process model

  Hobart Mowrer(1960) - an explanation for the onset and persistence of disorder that create anxiety, the two process are classical conditioning for onset and operant condition for persistence
• Little Albert case study - classical conditioning


  Watson and Rayner(1920) - created a phobia in a 9 month old baby for a white rat

  before the study Albert showed no signs of anxiety towards the rat, whenever the rat was presented to the baby a loud noise would happen which frightened him

  this noise is an unconditioned stimulus which creates an unconditioned response of fear when the rat, the neutral stimulus, and the unconditioned stimulus were encountered together this created a conditioned stimulus for the rat and the noise creating a conditioned response
• operant conditioning

  we learn through the consequence of or actions, if behaviour is rewarded (positively reinforced) we are likely to repeat it and if a behaviour is punished (negatively reinforced) we are less likely to repeat it

  we avoid a phobic stimulus we successfully escape the fear and anxiety that would have suffered and experience if we had remained there, this reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour and so the phobia is maintained
• behavioural approach evaluation strength

  evidence for a link between bad experiences and phobias: De Jongh (2006) - founf that 75% of people who ad a fear of dental treatment had experiences a traumatic experience involving dentistry, showing that the association between stimulus and an unconditioned response does lead to the development of the phobia
• behavioural approach evaluation limitation

  counter evidence for De Jongh as some phobias don't come from a traumatic event meaning the association between phobias and frightening experiences is not as strong as we would expect making this a limited explanation

  
  

  the two process model fails to explain cognitive factors as it explains the behaviour of phobias such as avoidance responses but they also have a cognitive component, this could involve irrational thinking about the phobic stimulus which the behavioural explanation does not explain