Behavioural Explanations Of Phobias (Psychopathology) Flashcards
What are phobias
-A type of anxiety disorder
-Phobias are characterised by uncontrollable, extreme anxiety levels that are out of proportion to actual risk
What are the subtypes of phobias
-Specific phobias - fear of a specific thing e.g spiders
-Social phobias - being over anxious in social situations e.g public speaking
-Agrophobia - fear of leaving home or space safe
What are the 3 characteristics
Behavioural - how the person is behaving or acting
Cognitive - persons thoughts and mental processes
Emotional - how the person feels
What are the behavioural characteristics of phobias
Panic - heightened psychological arousal from exposure of phobic stimulus - crying, screaming, running away
Avoidance - tend to go a lot of effort to avoid contact with phobia to reduce chances of anxiety responses - may interfere with everyday functioning
Endurance - remains in persons of phobic stimuli but feels Hugh levels of anxiety - may be unavoidable e.g flying
What are the cognitive characteristics of phobias
Selective attention - not able to look away from phobic stimuli - evolution = can react quickly to something dangerous
irrational beliefs - incorrect perception as to what the danger posed actually is - unreasonable responses + increases pressure to perform well in social situations
cognitive distortions - does not perceive phobic stimulus accurately
What are the emotional characteristics of phobias
persistant excessive fear and anxiety - anxiety prevents relaxing and makes it difficult to experience positive emotion
fear from exposure to phobic stimulus - phobia can produce immediate fear response even panic attacks
unreasonable response - responses are wildly disproportionate to the danger posed
Explain how classical conditioning is an explanation for phobias
Before conditioning
-Neutral stimulus (rat) does not trigger a fear response
-Unconditioned stimulus (bang) causes baby to be scared (unconditioned response)
During Conditioning
-Neutral stimulus (rat) paired with unconditioned stimulus (bang) create association
After Conditioning
-Neutral stimulus (rat) triggers unconditioned response (fear) - a phobia of the rat is formed
Explain the two process model
Watson - acquiring a phobia this is done through classical conditioning
Maintaining a phobia - operant conditioning - reinforced behaviours likely to be repeated
-negative reinforcement - escaping from object or situation to reduce fear
Strengths of characteristics of phobias
-Real world application - if we can establish characterisics we can make treatments -exposure therapies such as systematic desensitisation - helps individuals overcome fears like flying - reduces anxiety levels - effective treatments
Support for two process model - Sue et all found people with phobias often recall a specific incident when their phobia appeared - this supports the idea that phobias are learnt through conditioning and associating a neutral stimulus to a fear response - creates validity for the model
Limitations of characteristics of phobias
-Opposing research - Dinardo found that a control group who did not have a phobia of dogs, had experienced a similar amount of fearful incidents with dogs but had not developed a phobia - so disproves the idea that a fearful incident can make someone conditioned to have a phobia of it
-Phobias can develop without direct negative experiences. OST suggested that some phobias align with biological preparedness explanation suggesting that we have a predisposed fear to snakes, germs etc because they pose real threats to survival years ago
