explaining phobias

• the little Albert experiment was conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920), who aimed to demonstrate that an irrational fear could be induced by classical conditioning
• Whenever the rat was placed in Albert’s lap, Watson made a loud noise by banging together two steel bars behind Albert’s back. Watson did this 7 times
• The loud noise is an unconditioned stimulus and Albert’s response to it (crying) is an unconditioned response
• Before conditioning the rat was a neutral stimulus
• By the third trial Albert showed fear whenever he saw the rat
• The rat became a conditioned stimulus and Albert’s fear is a conditioned response
• Albert showed the same fear when presented with similar white fluffy stimuli
• Mowrer (1960) proposed the two-process-model based on the behavioural approach to explain phobias
• The two-process model suggests phobias are acquired by classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning
• classical conditioning involves learning to associate a neutral stimulus with something that already triggers a fear response, an unconditioned stimulus, to produce a conditioned response
• operant conditioning is when behaviour is reinforced or punished so it is more likely to be repeated
• Mowrer suggested that negative reinforcement, whenever we avoid a phobic stimulus, means we successfully escape the fear and anxiety that we would have suffered if we had remained there. This reduction in fear is a desirable consequence and reinforces the avoidance behaviour and so the phobia is maintained
• the two-process model has implications for treatment as it explains why patients need to be exposed to their fear and prevented from carrying out their avoidance behaviour to stop reinforcement occurring which forms the basis of the model
• There is evidence to suggest that some avoidance behaviour appears to be motivated by positive feelings of safety which explains why some patients with agoraphobia are able to leave their house with a trusted person with relatively little anxiety but not alone (Buck 2010)
• A limitation is that the two-process model is an incomplete explanation of phobias
• Bouton (2007) pointed out that evolutionary factors probably have an important role in phobias as we easily acquire phobias of things that have been a source of danger in our evolutionary past because it is adaptive
• Seligman called the acquisition of evolutionary phobias 'biological preparedness'