Eval of Two Process Model

• Two process model


  • One strength is that there is research support for the ideas
• Research support for the two process model


  • Bagby reported the case of a woman who had a phobia of running water that she acquired from her feet getting stuck in some rocks near a waterfall
  • Mowrer (1960) conditioned rats to fear a buzzer through the use of electric shocks and then through operant conditioning he trained the rats to escape the electric shocks by making the avoidance response of jumping over a barrier when the buzzer sounded
• These pieces of research provide strong support for the idea that phobias can be acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning
• Two process model

  • It explained how phobias could also be MAINTAINED over time and this had important implications for therapies because it explains why patients need to be exposed to the feared stimulus
• Once a patient is prevented from practicing their avoidance behaviour the behaviour ceases to be reinforced and so it declines
• The effectiveness of systematic desensitisation in addressing phobic symptoms lends support to the behaviourist explanation of phobias
• Limitations of the behavioural explanation of phobias


  • In theory, a phobia to any potentially harmful object or situation could develop, however this does not happen
  • Cars pose a very realistic threat to life, yet phobias of cars is virtually non-existent
• Preparedness theory


  Humans have been 'prepared' by evolution to be fearful of things which in our distant past were a danger to survival
• We have not had enough time to evolve a tendency to fear cars and guns, even though they are far more dangerous to our survival in modern society than say, spiders and snakes
• The theory of preparedness suggests that there is more to acquiring phobias than simple conditioning
• A limitation of the behavioural approach to explaining phobias is that it ignores the role of cognitive factors
• Cognitive factors in the development of phobias


  • DiNardo et al (1988) found that 50% of people with a fear of dogs had had some kind of negative experience with a dog in their childhood, however 50% participants who had no phobias at all reported that they had experienced a traumatic event involving a dog
  • Those who had developed a phobia tended to have focused more the likelihood of that kind of event happening again
• This suggests that cognitive factors may play a role in the development of phobias, reducing the validity of the dual process model