Phobias - symptoms, treatments, and explanations

• Behavioural symptoms

  Panic

  • May involve a range of behaviours such as crying, screaming or running away from the phobic stimulus.

  Avoidance

  • Considerable effort to avoid coming into contact with the phobic stimulus. This can make it hard to go about everyday life, especially if the phobic stimulus is often seen, e.g. public places.
• Emotional symptoms


  Anxiety and fear

  • Fear is the immediate experience when a phobic encounters or thinks about the phobic stimulus. Fear leads to anxiety.

  Responses are unreasonable

  • Response is widely disproportionate to the threat pose, e.g. an arachnophobic will have a strong emotional response to a tiny spider.
• Cognitive symptoms


  Selective attention to the phobic stimulus

  • The phobic finds it hard to look away from the phobic stimulus e.g. a person with a fear of beards cannot concentrate on a task if there is a bearded man in the room.

  Irrational beliefs

  • For example, social phobias may involve beliefs such as 'if I blush people will think I'm weak'.
• The two-process model - classical and operant conditioning.


  Mowrer argued that phobias are learned by classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning, i.e. two processes are involved.
• Acquisition by classical conditioning


  Involves association.

  1. UCS triggers a fear response (fear = UCR), e.g. being bitten creates anxiety.
  2. NS is associated with the UCS, e.g. being bitten by a dog.
  3. NS becomes a CS producing fear (now the CR). The dog becomes a CS causing a CR of anxiety/fear following the bite.
• Little Albert: conditioned fear.


  Watson and Raynor showed how a fear of rats could be conditioned in 'Little Albert'.

  1. Whenever Albert played with a white rat, a loud noise was made close to his ear. The noise caused a fear response.
  2. Rat did not create fear until the bang and the rat had been paired together several times.
  3. Albert showed a fear response every time he came into contact with the rat.
• Generalisation of fear to other stimuli.


  Little Albert also showed a fear response to other white furry objects, including a fur coat, and a Santa Claus mask.
• Maintenance by operant conditioning (negative reinforcement).


  When a phobic avoids a phobic stimulus they escape the anxiety that would have been experienced.

  This reduction in fear negatively reinforces the avoidance behaviour and the phobia is maintained.
• Strength of the two process model - has good explanatory power.

  The model went beyond Watson and Raynor's simple classical conditioning explanation. This explanation has important implications for therapy; if a patient is prevented from practising their avoidance behaviour then the phobic behaviour declines. The application to therapy is extremely important.
• Two limitations of the two-process model.

  Not all bad experiences lead to phobias

  • Sometimes they do, which exemplifies the role of conditioning. However DiNardo showed that some people undergo a traumatic occurrence and don't develop a phobia. Suggests that conditioning alone cannot fully explain phobias.

  Alternative explanations for avoidance behaviour

  • In some more complex phobias avoidance can be motivated by more positive feelings like safety. Limitation because juxtaposes explanation.