acquiring/maintaining a phobia Flashcards
what is a phobia ?
overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, animal or feeling.
what are some features of having a phobia?
- life limiting
- irrational
- you tend to experience a high level of anxiety
- symptoms include; rapid heart rate, dry mouth and feeling sick
how does classical conditioning explain how someone can acquire a phobia?
- a phobia ca be acquired when association is made between a stimuli and a response.
- for example someone may generate a fear of balloons due to hearing one pop as a child and the noise made them jump
- they are associating the noise of the pop balloon and the fear response she felt with all balloons.
- just how you acquire.
how does classical conditioning explain how you maintain a phobia?
- maintenance of a phobia could only occur if this was a manipulated situation like the one in Little Albert study
- however in real life it would take multiple pairings for maintenance to occur
- there is such thing as one-trial conditioning where the association between both the response and the stimulus is so strong that extinction will not occur.
how does operant conditioning explain how someone may maintain a phobia?
- concerns how rewarding certain behaviour can cause the reproduction of these behaviours.
- for example if a child screamed and ran away from a spider and then got a hug from her mum, she is being rewarded for that behaviour
- negative reinforcement also can take place e.g. with social phobia such as anthropophobia which is fear of social situations, people who isolate them selves by avoiding public are being negatively reinforced (taking something negative away).
how does operant conditioning describe how someone would acquire a phobia?
it cant
how does social learning theory describe how someone can acquire a phobia?
- through observing the feared response of a model or role model
- e.g. if a mum shows fear towards a spider the child may repeat this behaviour
- she is even more likely to repeat the behaviour if vicarious reinforcement is involved
how does social learning theory explain how someone may maintain a phobia?
- if the model repeatedly displays the same behaviour and is rewarded (vicarious reinforcement)
- in this sense, it is the best explanation as it explains how a phobia is acquired and maintained which the others cant.
what is a strength for classical conditioning?
- alot of the evidence found has been conducted in lab experiments which have high controls and therefore are likely to have internal validity
- for example Pavlov’s experiment.
what is a strength for operant conditioning?
- there is a lot of supporting evidence such as Bandura, the kids are likely to repeat the behaviour of the models after seeing them rewarded with fizzy drinks etc..
- Skinner’s birds
what is a supporting study for social learning theory?
Mineka and Zinbarg (2006) - describes the case of a boy who developed a phobia of vomiting after watching his grandfather vomit before dying.
what did Kleinknect 1982 find?
- he looked at the American tarantula society and found that out of those who had a phobia no reported a direct traumatic experience associated with CC
what is a weakness with the use of animal studies?
- in terms of anxiety it is difficult to compare animals and humans as they respond to anxiety in different ways.
- most of these theories uses animal studies to support there evidence and therefore may not be credible.
how may the research carried out to develop these theories lack ecological validity?
- animal experiment require high controls
- lab setting
- contrived environment
- this suggests it lacks ecological validity.
