Behavioural approach to explaining phobias

• Mower (1947) proposed the two process model to explain phobias
• classical conditioning explains how a phobia is acquired. an initially neutral stimulus is pared with an unconditioned stimulus, which produces the unconditioned response of fear. the neutral stimulus then becomes a conditioned stimulus and produces fear as a conditioned response whenever the CS is presented
• Watson and Rayner (1920) paired an initially neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus. this produced the unconditioned response of fear in a baby known as Little Albert. after making this pairing four times, Little Albert produced a conditioned fear response when they presented him with the rat in the absence of the UCS. this demonstrated that a fear response to an initially neutral stimulus could be classically conditioned
• operant conditioning explains how phobias are maintained. if fear is lowed by avoiding the phobic stimulus, then avoidance behaviour becomes a negative reinforcer
• for example, if someone was afraid of spiders because they had been previously frightened by one, the reduction in fear they experienced by avoiding spider would lead them to continue avoiding them