behavioural approach to explaining phobias

Question 1

what does the behavioural approach emphasise?

Answer 1

• the role of learning in the acquisition of behaviour
• focuses on behaviour; what we can see
  > panic, avoidance and endurance
• not cognitive and emotional aspects

Question 2

who proposed to the two-process model and what is it?

Answer 2

• orval hobart mowrer (1960)
• based on the behavioural approach to phobias
• states that phobias are acquired (learned in the first place) by classical conditional and then continue because of operant conditioning

Question 3

how are phobias acquired by classical conditioning?

Answer 3

• an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and a neutral stimulus (NS) are repeated paired together
• the NS eventually produces the same response that was first produced by the UCS alone

Question 4

what occurred in the ‘little albert’ study?

Answer 4

• john watson and rosalie rayner (1920) created a phobia in a 9-month-old baby called ‘little albert’, who showed no unusual anxiety at the start of the study
• when a white rat was presented to him, the researchers made a loud, frightening noise by banging an iron bar close to albert’s ear (noise = UCS, creating an UCR of fear)
• when a rat (NS) and UCS are encountered close together, NS becomes associated with UCS and both produce fear response
• rat becomes CS that produces a CR

Question 5

how was little albert’s conditioning generalised to similar objects?

Answer 5

• they tested albert by showing him other furry objects such as a non-white rabbit, a fur coat and watson wearing a santa claus beard made out of cotton balls
• he displayed distress at the sight of all of these

Question 6

how is a phobia maintained by operant conditioning?

Answer 6

• behaviour is reinforced or punished
• both negative and positive reinforcement increases the frequency of a behaviour
• in the case of negative reinforcement, an individual avoids a situation that is unpleasant
• such a behaviour results in a desirable consequence, which means the behaviour will be repeated

Question 7

what did mowrer suggest about the avoidance of a phobia in relation to operant conditioning?

Answer 7

• whenever we avoid a phobic stimulus we successfully escape the fear and anxiety that we would have experienced if we had remained there
• this reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour so the phobia is maintained

Question 8

evaluation: real-world application in exposure therapies (eg. systematic desensitisation)

Answer 8

• distinctive element of the two-process model is the idea that phobias are maintained by avoidance of the phobic stimulus
• this is important in explaining why people with phobias benefit from being exposed to the phobic stimulus
• once the avoidance behaviour is prevented it ceases to be reinforced by the experience of anxiety reduction and avoidance therefore declines
• in behavioural terms, the phobia is the avoidance behaviour so when this avoidance is prevented the phobia is cured
• this shows the value of the two-process approach as it identifies a means of treating phobias

Question 9

evaluation: does not account for cognitive aspects of phobias

Answer 9

• behavioural explanation is only geared towards explaining behaviour eg. avoidance of phobic stimulus
• however, we know that phobias are not simply avoidance responses and also have significant cognitive component eg. people hold irrational beliefs about the phobic stimulus
• two-process model does not offer an adequate explanation for phobic cognitions does not completely explain the symptoms of phobias

Question 10

evaluation: evidence for a link between bad experiences and phobias

Answer 10

• little albert study shows how a frightening experience involving a stimulus can lead to a phobia of that stimulus
• ad de jongh et al. (2006) found that 73% of people with a fear of dental treatment had experienced a traumatic experience, mostly involving dentistry, but also being the victim of a violent crime
• this can be compared to a control group of people with low dental anxiety where only 21% had experienced a traumatic event
• this confirms that the association between stimulus (dentistry) and an UCR (pain) does lead to the development of the phobia

Question 11

evaluation: not all phobias appear following a bad experience

Answer 11

• common phobias such as snake phobias occur in populations where very few people have any experience of snakes let alone traumatic experiences
• also not all frightening experiences lead to phobias
• this means that the association between phobias and frightening experiences is not as strong as we would expect if behavioural theories provided a complete explanation

Question 12

evaluation: learning and evolution

Answer 12

• more general aspects of phobias may be better explained by evolutionary theory
• eg. we tend to acquire phobias of things that have presented a danger in our evolutionary past (eg. snakes or the dark)
• this is called preparedness (seligman 1971)