Phobias

• Panic


  A phobic person's response to the presence of a phobic stimulus, may involve behaviours like crying, screaming or running away. Children may react by clinging or having a tantrum.
• Avoidance


  Unless the sufferer is consciously trying to face their fear, they go to a lot of trouble trying to avoid the phobic stimulus
• Endurance


  The sufferer remains in the presence of the phobic stimulus but continues to feel anxiety
• Anxiety


  An unpleasant state of high arousal making it difficult to relax or feel positive emotion
• Fear


  The immediate and unpleasant feeling of distress in response to encountering or thinking about the phobic stimulus
• Emotional responses to phobias are unreasonable
• Phobia


  An irrational fear of an object or situation
• The DSM states that all phobias are characterised by excessive fear and anxiety triggered by an object, place or situation. The extent of the fear is out of proportion to the phobic stimulus.
• Behavioural


  Ways in which people act
• Emotional


  Ways in which people feel
• Selective attention


  If a sufferer can see the phobic stimulus it is hard for them to look away from it
• Irrational beliefs


  A phobic may hold irrational beliefs about the feared stimulus
• Cognitive distortions


  A phobic's perceptions about the phobic stimulus may be distorted
• Behavioural approach


  Explains behaviour in terms of what is observable and in terms of learning
• Classical conditioning


  Learning through association. Occurs when the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus (NS). The NS eventually produces the same response as the UCS alone.
• Operant conditioning


  Behaviour is shaped and maintained through its consequences. Learning through positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement or punishment.
• Two-process model


  Classical conditioning is used to explain the acquisition (onset) of phobias and Operant conditioning is used to explain how phobias are maintained.
• The behavioural approach suggests phobias are learned behaviours
• Mowrer argues phobias are initially learnt through classical conditioning, then maintained by operant conditioning
• Systematic desensitisation


  A behavioural therapy for treating anxiety disorders in which the sufferer learns relaxation techniques and then faces a progressive hierarchy of exposure to the objects and situations that cause anxiety
• Flooding


  A behavioural therapy used to remove phobias through direct confrontation of a feared object or situation
• Extinction


  The disappearance of a previously learned behaviour when the behaviour is not reinforced
• Systematic desensitisation


  1. Anxiety hierarchy

  2. Relaxation

  3. Exposure
• Wolpe (1960) used flooding to remove a girl's phobia of being in cars
• Solter (2007) used flooding with a 5-month old baby who showed signs of traumatic stress after a hospital stay, resulting in the disappearance of symptoms
• Systematic desensitisation is considered more effective than drugs or relaxation alone in treating phobias
• Systematic desensitisation reduces the anxiety and fear symptoms of the client, but does not address the cause of the phobia
• Flooding is cost effective as most phobias can be cured in a single session
• Flooding can be considered very traumatic and lead to high drop-out rates
• There are ethical concerns with flooding, but the long-term benefits of eradicating the phobia may outweigh the short-term distress
• Strength of behaviourist approach to explaining phobias 


  Good explanatory power, a step forward as it explains how phobias are acquired as well as maintained. Practical applications in systematic desensitisation as well as flooding.
• A03 - Little Albert

  Supporting evidence Watson and raynor. Conditioned Albert to fear rats as they associated the rat (NS) with loud banging sounds (UCS) which caused fear and led him to being scared of the fluffy rat