Phobias

• Fear vs Phobias

  • fears can be sensible 
  • Phobia is more than fear because it is irrational 
  • Both can limit life
  • Phobic people when they get close to phobic object or situation will experience string anxiety and symptoms including fast breathing, feeling sick, dry mouth, fast heart rate, chest pain.
  • Phobia means that a person will tend to avoid a certain situation due to the unpleasant symptoms 
• acquiring phobias: Classical conditioning

  something that yields a fear response UCR naturally is the unconditional stimulus. The UCS which causes USR is paired with a neutral stimulus such as a white rat. After a few pairings or only one an association is learned and the NS becomes the conditioned stimulus and will produce the conditioned response of fear. Fear has been conditioned to a previously neutral stimulus
• classical condition acquisition steps:

  1. unconditional response of fear to an unconditional stimulus is paired with neutral stimulus
  2. The pairing can occur significantly once, or multiple times reinforcing the pairing
  3. Person will start to associate the fear response to the neutral stimulus making the person experience a conditioned fear responded to the conditioned stimulus
• Operant conditioning Acquisition:

  if someone strokes a dog and is bitten this could be a positive punishment. This would stop the person stroking that dog. The person avoids stroking dogs which would be rewarded by negative reinforcement. So the person would continue to not stroke dogs . This could develop into a phobia of always trying to avoid dogs being negatively reinforced leading to a repeated behaviour to not touch dogs or go near them.
• operant conditioning acquisition :Steps

  1. person will get into negative situation which will cause an unpleasant consequence 
  2. person will avoid getting in the same situation, which will be rewarded by negative reinforcement 
  3. Phobia could be developed due to the continuous reinforcement of avoiding the negative situation
• Social learning theory acquisition

  if a model shows fear of a certain situation or object then someone watching can learn that fear of phobia. Bandura showed that imitative occurs with a rewarding his 1961 experiment. Leib et al (2000) found that children of parents with social phobias were more likely to have social phobia as well.
• Social learning theory Acquisition

  Steps

  1. Person will view a model having a fear reaction to a situation
  2. The models reaction may be repeated multiple times
  3. Person may view model rewarding self for avoiding situation
  4. Person will start to imitate behaviour motivated through vicarious reinforcement 
  5. Person will start to experience same satisfaction from avoiding situation 
• Maintenance of phobia

  Classical conditioning

  Usually after CC causes learning it does not last long as extinction can occur is pairing is. Moot repeated as shown is Watson and Rayners little Albert study 1920 so it is probably not responsible for maintaining phobias. However one trial learning can explain how phobias are maintained as the association can be so strong that learning is very hard to undo and it does not become extinct this can explain how classical conditioning can maintain phobias 
• Operant conditioning Maintenance of phobia

  Thorndikes law effect explains that behaviour that is rewarded is repeated. Negative reinforcement explains how phobias can be maintained by avoiding the situation that causes anxiety this removes the negative feeling of fear so the person repeatedly avoids phobia which is repeatedly reinforcing the phobia
• shortened operant conditioning maintenance of phobia:

  Shortened:

  1. Person maintains phobia through reinforcement
  2. Person with phobia avoids phobic situation which negatively reinforces behaviour as reward is not feeling unpleasant feeling of fear
  3. Person repeatedly avoids phobic situation for the negative reinforcement and therefore reinforces phobia
• shortened classical conditioning maintenance of phobia::

  1. Persons phobia may be so strong that  it is very hard top undo and therefore does not become extinct
• Social learning theory Maintainence of phobia

  If someone is modelling phobia. SLT can explain. How it is maintained. If mother is maintaining her phobia due to operant conditioning, then child may model their behaviour on this and also maintain their phobia via vicarious reinforcement 

  Shortened

  1. Person observes model maintaining phobia through operant conditioning negative reinforcement 
  2. Person models behaviour reinforcing their phobia and maintaining through vicarious reinforcement 
• A phobia categorised as an anxiety disorder which can limit the persons life due to the fear being so extreme that someone will avoid many situations to avoid coming into contact with the phobia. 
• Phobias also cause fear reaction symptoms such as higher glucose levels, increased pulse and breathing rate, sweating and dry mouth which someone with a phobia will find unpleasant making it more likely for them to avoid the phobia. 
• A phobia is an intense irrational fear towards a situation and or object which have been commonly explained by learning theory’s, specifically classical conditioning discovered by Pavlov, operant conditioning discovered by Skinner and social learning theory by Bandura.