Behavioural Approach: Explaining Phobias Flashcards
How does the behavioural approach explain phobias?
-Behaviourists claim abnormal behaviour is learned in the same way all other behaviour is
What is the 2 process model?
-Idea that phobias are acquired though classical conditioning and then maintained through operant conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
(acquisition of phobia)
-Learning through association
-When an unconditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus to make a conditioned stimulus which elicits a conditioned response
What Is operant conditioning?
(maintenance of phobia)
-Learning through reward and punishment
-Rewarding behaviour is repeated
-Negative reinforcement = behaviour that prevents punishment
-Behaviour which causes punishment will not be repeated
How do we use the 2 way process to explain a phobia of dogs
1) Classical Conditioning
Before conditioning
-Neutral stimulus = Dog (no reaction)
-Unconditioned Stim = Being bitten
-Unconditioned response = Fear
During conditioning
-Netral stimulus = Dog
Paired with
-Unconditioned stim + response
-Equals fear
After conditioning
-Conditioned stimulus = Dog
-Conditioned response = Fear
2) Operant Conditioning
-Individual will receive negative reinforcement by eg. crossing road when seeing a dog
-This reduces fear and anxiety so will continue to cross the road or avoid dogs
What are 2 Strengths of Behavioural Explanations?
-Research support: Little Albert
-A study conducted to condition Little Albert, 11 month old baby to fear a white rat
-Al was aloud to play with the rat for weeks and showed no fear and enjoyed playing with it
-Rat = neutral stimulus
-Study then paired the rat, (NS) with a loud noise, (UCS) which frightened him, (UCR)
-This was repeated 5x by this point Al was terrified of the rat and tried to avoid it
-Al ha paired the NS (rat) with the UCS (loud noise) and the rat became the (CS) and fear was the (CR)
The study had successfully conditioned Al to the white rat demonstrating the strength of behavioural explanations to phobias
Explanation has led to successful treatments
-Applied to conditional treatment using Systematic desensitisation and classical conditioning to help replace old maladaptive associations with adaptive ones
-It has proven to be successful with nearly 75% of patients treated for phobias
Supports the explanation as it suggests we do use association and classical techniques to extinguish links between phobias and fear
What are 2 weaknesses of Behavioural Explanations?
Ignores innate fears and phobias
-There are some aspect of phobic behaviours that require further explanation
-Evolutionary factors have an important role in phobias
-Fear of snakes or the dark are evolutionary as we know what danger they can cause
-Seligman called these phobias ‘biological preparedness’ , this is innate predisposition to acquire certain fears
This phenomena is a serious problem as we don’t acquire these fears through any conditioning and it is infant much more complex
Not all phobias are acquired through classical conditioning
-Some people with phobias never recall the incident that caused it
-Only around 60% of those who had fears of dogs could remember the scenario when they were conditioned to fear it
-People also have fears of snakes despite never encountering a snake as this may be the result of a different process
This challenges the idea of any type of conditioning as it can’t explain all phobias or explain how it is maintained
