behavioural approach

Question 1

What is a phobia?

Answer 1

all phobias are characterised by excessive fear or anxiety. Triggered by an object, place or situation. The extent of the fear is out of proportion with any real danger presented by the phobic stimulus. There are three types: specific, social and agoraphobia

Question 2

Behavioural characteristics

Answer 2

ways in which people behave/act
panic - may panic in response to presence of phobic stimulus e.g. screaming, crying, running away
Avoidance - tend to avoid coming into contact with phobic stimulus
endurance - sufferer remains in the presence of the phobic stimulus but experiences high levels of anxiety

Question 3

Emotional characteristics

Answer 3

ways in which people feel
anxiety - show high levels of anxiety, difficult to experience any positive emotion and relax
emotional responses are unreasonable - emotional responses we experience in relation to the phobic stimulus go beyond what is reasonable, disproportionate to danger posed

Question 4

Cognitive characteristics

Answer 4

Ways in which people think
Selective attention to the phobic stimulus - if a sufferer can see the phobic stimulus it is hard to look away from it. Struggle to concentrate on what they are doing
Irrational beliefs - a phobic may hold irrational beliefs about the phobic stimulus
Cognitive distortions - the phobics perceptions on the phobic stimulus may be distorted e.g. ignoring positive, jumping to conclusions, over generlisation

Question 5

Two - process model

Answer 5

• acquisition by classical conditioning
  Learning to associate something that we initially have no fear of (neutral stimulus) with something that already triggers a fear response (unconditioned stimulus)
• maintenance by operant conditioning
  Whenever we avoid a phobic stimulus we escape the fear and anxiety that we would have suffered, reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour and so the phobia is maintained

Question 6

Little Albert experiment

Answer 6

• Watson and Rayner
• created a phobia in 9 month old Little Albert
• when presented with a white rat, the researchers made a frightening noise by banging an iron bar close to his ear
• rat became conditioned to cause conditioned response of fear

Question 7

Strength of two - process model

Answer 7

• led to successful treatments/ practical applications
• behavioural therapies/treatments have been developed to successfully treat phobias as the model explains why patients need to be exposed to the feared stimulus
• e.g. systematic desensitisation
• provided benefits for real world in a therapeutic setting , improves invidivuals life

Question 8

Limitation of two - process model (red)

Answer 8

• env reductionist, oversimplifying complex behaviour leading to loss of validity
• according to the evolutionary approach, we acquire phobias of things that have been a source of danger in our evolutionary past such as fear of snakes
• cognitive psychologists claim that phobias are caused by faulty, distorted and irrational thinking
• more to acquiring phobias than simple conditioning

Question 9

Limitation of two-process model

Answer 9

• not all avoidance behaviour associated with phobias seems to be the result of anxiety reduction
• some avoidance behaviours appear to be motivated more by positive feelings of safety and not to necessary avoid the phobic stimulus
• explains why some people with agoraphobia are able to leave the house with a trusted person with relatively little anxiety
• limitation of model which suggests avoidance is purely motivated by anxiety reduction