explaining phobias

• phobia:

  • intense, persistant and irrational fear of an object, context or activity
  • fear is atypical when people have an extreme reaction to a non-threatening or mildy threatening situation
• types of phobias:

  • specific phobias
  • social phobias
  • agoraphobia
• specific phobias:

  • fears about specific objects or situations e.g spiders, flying
• social phobias:

  • anxiety relating to social situations e.g public speaking, using public toilet
• agoraphobia:

  • fear of being outside or in public spaces
• Behavioural characteristics of phobias:

  • panic - screaming, crying
  • avoidance - prevent contact with stimulus
  • endurance - choose to remain with stimulus but keep a wary eye
• emotional characteristics of phobias:

  • anxiety - unpleasant high arousal, prevents relaxation and can be long term
  • fear - immediate and extremely unpleasant experience, more intense than anxiety
• cognitive characteristics of phobias:

  • selective attention - struggle to focus on anything else
  • irrational beliefs - resistant to rational arguements
  • cognitive distortions - inaccurate or unrealistic perceptions
• two process model:

  • mowrer proposed model based on behavioural approach towards phobias
  • phobias acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning
• classical conditioning:

  • associate a neutral stimulus with something we're afraid of
  • unconditioned stimulus: ant attack, unconditioned response: fear, neutral stimulus: flower, conditioned stimulus: flower, conditioned response: fear
• watson and rayner: little albert procedure

  • 9 month baby
  • shown many stimuli - fear only shown when banging metal bar with hammer
  • 2 months later albert returned - shown white rat when banging
• little albert findings:

  • after trials, albert showed fear when shown the rat
  • ucs: banging, ucr: fear, ns and cs: white rat, cr: fear
• stimulus generalisation:

  • conditioning generalises to similar objects
  • rabbit, fur coat, watson wearing santa beard made out of cotton balls
• operant conditioning:

  • fear leads to avoidance which leads to phobia persistance
  • avoiding has desirable consequences so we feel rewarded (negative reinforcement)
• EVALUATION: real world application to therapy

  • behaviourist idea have been used to develop exposure therapies (systematic desensitisation and flooding)based on conditioning
  • approach says phobias maintained through avoidance - avoidance prevented = no reinforcement = decline
  • therapies successfully used to treat phobias - support or behaviourist explanation
• EVALUATION: ignores evolutionary factors

  • bournton - evolutionary factors play a role in phobias, especially id avoidance increases chance of survival
  • psychologists say we are predisposed to some phobias (snakes, heights) - innate, survival mechanism
  • innate predisposition is called preparedness (seligman) - casts doubts on model, suggests there is more to phobias than learning
• EVALUATION: ignores cognitive factors

  • alternative explanation: cognitive approach - phobias develop as consequence of irrational thinking
  • person thinks that being in lift can trap and suffocate them - leads to extreme anxiety and triggers phobia
  • two process model doesnt fully explain symptoms of phobias