Phobias

Question 1

What is a phobia

Answer 1

A type of anxiety disorder

Question 2

What are phobias characterised as

Answer 2

Uncontrollable, extremely irrational and enduring fears

Question 3

What is behavioural characteristics

Answer 3

How you behave when you see the phobic stimulus

Question 4

Characteristics of behavioural reactions

Answer 4

Panic - causes high panic and stress, hyperventilating
Avoidance - immediate and intense response to avoid the phobic stimulus
Freezing - part of flight or flight response, when fear is so intense

Question 5

What is emotional characteristics

Answer 5

How you feel when you see the phobic stimulus

Question 6

What are the characteristics of emotional reactions

Answer 6

Excessive and unreasonable fear, anxiety and panic
Triggered by the presence of phobic stimulus

Question 7

What is cognitive characteristics

Answer 7

What you think when you see phobic stimulus

Question 8

What are the characteristics of cognitive reaction

Answer 8

Selective attention - find it difficult to direct their attention elsewhere, will cause them to become fixated on what they fear

Irrational beliefs - believe the worse can happen even if it is very unlikely

Question 9

What is the two-process model

Answer 9

Proposes that phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning

Question 10

Describe how phobias are acquired via classical conditioning

Answer 10

Born with innate fears of loud noise.
UCS - loud noise leads to UCR - crying
NS - clown is paired with the UCS which leads to the UCR
After condtioning the NS becomes the CS (clown) which leads to a CR (crying)
This causes a fear to form of clowns as the child associates it with loud noises

Question 11

What is maintenance rehearsal

Answer 11

Through negative reinforcement which is the removal of something unpleasant which reinforces the fear

Question 12

What does a person avoiding their phobia cause

Answer 12

Causes the fear to build as it has not been confronted. It will be very resistant to extinction as the behaviour means that the phobic person will be unlikely to confront their fear.

Question 13

What is one strength of the behavioural approach to explaining phobias

Answer 13

Research support:
Di Gallo et al, reported that around 20 % of people experincing traumatic are accidents developed a phobia of travelling in cars.
This supports classical condition as the NS of a car became associated with the naturally occurring fear response to the crash
Also supports operant conditioning as the people tended to stay at home rather then make car journeys to avoid anxiety

Question 14

What is one limitation to the behavioural approach to explaining phobias

Answer 14

Evidence that not all phobias are formed through association
Some phobias don’t follow a traumatic experience e.g. snakes which has been acquired through learning
Pre-disposed to some phobias, would have given ancestors a survival advantage. This means that certain phobias are biological and ‘hard-wired’

Question 15

What are the two main treatments for phobias

Answer 15

Systematic desensitisation and flooding

Question 16

What is systematic desensitisation

Answer 16

Based on classical conditioning. Aims to cause extinction of the fear response.
Involves 3 stages:
Relaxation training
Hierarchy construction
Exposure

Question 17

What is relaxation training

Answer 17

teaching the client how to relax using muscle relaxation and breathing techniques

Question 18

What is hierarchy construction

Answer 18

Therapist and client together create a graded series of anxiety provoking situations starting with those that arouse the least to most anxiety

Question 19

What is exposure

Answer 19

Working up through the hierarchy while practising the relaxation techniques

Question 20

What is flooding

Answer 20

Involves exposure to the phobic stimulus, clients go straight to the top of the hierarchy.
Client is prevented from making their usual avoidance response and is forced to confront their fear.
Phobia should become extinct

Question 21

What is a strength of the behavioural approach to treating phobias

Answer 21

Supporting research evidence:
Brosnan and Thorpe demonstrated the effectiveness of SD in treating technophobic
Found that reduction in anxiety was three times greater in the treated SD group compared to the non-treated group
After a year those treated with SD were no different from a control group

Question 22

What is a limitation of the behavioural approach to treating phobias

Answer 22

Not ethically sound
Behavioural treatments (particularly flooding) raise ethical issues because they involve exposing patients to things they are afraid of, thus making them anxious
Flooding can also cause physical harm (for example, high levels of anxiety can increase the risk of heart attacks, if the patients already have some health problems).