Lecture 4 - Specific and Social Phobia

Question 1

What is Fear

Answer 1

Basic emotion involving the activation of the flight or fight response of the automatic nervous system

Question 2

What is anxiety

Answer 2

different kind of emotions that is a complex blend of diffuse and unpleased emotions/cognitions

Question 3

Adaptive value of anxiety

Answer 3

Anxiety is adaptive as it selectivly favored evolutionary perspective - gives ability to respond quickly and effectively to threatening situations.

Question 4

What are anxiety disorders

Answer 4

Chronic or sever anxiety that occurs without environmental change is pathological/maladaptive. Anxiety disorders are characterised by unrealistic irrational fears/anxieties of disabling intensity

Question 5

Criteria for specific phobia (4)

Answer 5

• Marked fear/anxiety about a specific object or situation
  o The phobic object or situation almost always provokes immediate fear or anxiety
  o The phobic object or situation is actively avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety
  o The fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context

Question 6

What are phobia types (5)

Answer 6

o	Animal type
o	Natural environment type
o	Blood injection injury type*
o	Situational type 
o	Other type

Question 7

What are specific phobias underpinned by?

Answer 7

Evolutionary preparedness (like avoiding spiders etc)

Question 8

Specific phobias from psychoanalytical perspective

Answer 8

defence against anxiety that stems from prepressed impulses from the ID. This repressed impulse from the ID is ‘too dangerous’ for us to know

Question 9

Specific phobias: behaviorist perspective

Answer 9

Conditioning (classical - where it is formed - and operent - where it is reinforced)
Example study: Watson and Raynor)

Question 10

Vulnerabilities to fear conditioning when…

Answer 10

familiarity with fear in past experiences, environment of fear conditioning, experience after conditioning experience

Question 11

Systematic Desensitization (wolpe 1958)

Answer 11

Controlled, increasing exposure to fear, participant modelling (bandura 1977,97), virtual reality environment

Question 12

evaluation of systematic desensitisation

Answer 12

Capafons (1998) found clinees fear of flying decreased after 12-25 week treatment

Question 13

Criteria for Social Phobia (4)

Answer 13

o Marked fear or anxiety about one or more social situations in which the individual is exposed to possible scrutiny by others
o The individual fears that he or she will act in a way or show anxiety symptoms that will be negatively evaluated
o The social situations almost always provoke fear or anxiety
o The social situations are avoided or endured with intense fear or anxiety

Question 14

Social Phobia: Evolutionary perspective

Answer 14

evolved as a product of dominance hierarchy

• Schupp et al (2004) found that threatening faces are processed more quickly and readily than others
• Dimberg and Ohman (1996) found that threatingin faces are associated with a stronger conditioned response compared to neutral or friendly faces

Question 15

Behavioural perspective

Answer 15

Need to ask lib about this slide

Question 16

social phobia: cognitive persepctive

Answer 16

Social situation, activating assumptions (high standards, expectations of rejection and neg beliefs about self), perceived social danger, processing self as a social object (detailed monitoring of self in social situation) leading to safety behaviours and romantic/cog symptoms.

Question 17

Social phobia: CBT

Answer 17

exercises that manipulate the focus of attention, trying to stop safety behaviours, watching video/audio feedback to help restructure cognition