phobias

• what is a phobia?

  type of anxiety disorder characterised by uncontrollable, extreme irrational and enduring fears
• what are the behavioural characteristics

  panic (running away or crying)avoidance, endurance (person freeze until over)
• what are the emotional characteristics

  persistent, excessive fear and anxiety , response is disproportionate to actual danger
• what are the cognitive characteristics

  irrational beliefs about phobic stimulus - recognition of exaggerated anxiety and hypervigilance
• what is Mowrer's two process model

  behaviourist explanation of phobias- says phobias are just a conditioned response to a stimulus that was firstly encountered in a scary situation
• explain process 1 - classical conditioning

  acquisition of phobias - natural response that causes fear becomes associated with a neutral stimulus which becomes the phobic stimulus
• explain process 2 - operant conditioning 


  maintenance of fear - when avoidance behaviours occur the fear is reduced which is rewarding so this will continue - negative reinforcement makes phobias resistant to extinction
• explain how process 1 is supported by evidence

  Watson and Raynor found they could cause a phobia in a baby by repeatedly pairing a loud scary noise with a white rat, shows clear cause and effect relationship between noise and fear then association with rat
• explain Ad De Jongh's findings

  found that 73% of people with fear of dentists had experienced traumatic event involving dentistry compared with control group with low dental anxiety where 21% experienced traumatic event which supports the acquisition phase as confirms association between stimulus and UCR can lead to phobia
• explain one limitation


  not all phobias appear after scary experience Munjack found only 50% of people with driving phobia had experienced traumatic event while driving , also some common phobias like snakes occur in populations where n snakes - so this can't explain this so limited explanation