Characterising phobias

• Behavioural- panic, avoidance, endurance,
• emotional- fear, anxiety
• cognitive- selective attention, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions
• Behavioural approach to phobias- phobias are learnt through experiences in the environment, two process model- classical conditioning- unconditioned stim paired with a neutral stimulus, then the neutral stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stim to become the conditioned stim which brings about the conditioned response
• Operant conditioning- in order to see a reduction in anxiety experienced the individual will avoid their phobic stimulus, the anxiety reduction negatively reinforces the individual to continue to avoid the object, therefore never facing their fear and never overcoming it,
• Research to support classical conditioning- Watson and Raynor conducted the little albert experiment, where they saw he feared a white rat after pairing it with a loud noise, white rat neutral stim and the loud noise unconditioned stim,
• However a negative to clasical conditioning is that not all phobias are learned through our environment, some are afraid of snakes even though they had never encountered one.