Phobias Flashcards
What is a phobia
An irrational fear of an object or situation, characterised by excessive fear/anxiety. The extent of fear is out of proportion to any real danger presented.
What are the 3 types of phobias according to DSM 5?
Specific phobias.
Social anxiety.
Agoraphobia.
What is social anxiety?
A social phobia, a phobia of any social situation.
What is agoraphobia?
A phobia of being outside/in a public place.
What are the behavioural characteristics?
Panic: panicking in response to the phobic stimulus, could result in crying, screaming or running away.
Avoidance: Avoiding the phonic stimulus, makes daily life complicated.
Endurance: Where the individual chooses to remain in the presence of the phobia, but continues to suffer and have high levels of anxiety.
What are the emotional characteristics?
Emotional responses: Being unreasonable and irrational, emotional response is disproportionate to the danger present.
Anxiety: An unpleasant state of high arousal, this stops any person being able to relax and feel any other emotion.
Fear: The immediate emotion when coming into conacr with phobia.
What are the cognitive characteristics?
Selective attention: When a person is near the phobia they cant focus on anything else but the phobia.
Irrational: Keeping your attention on the danger doesn’t increase survival like it usually does due to being irrational.
Cognitive distortions: Persons perception of the phobia is often distorted (e.g., exaggerated).
What is the behavioural explanation of phobias?
Phobias are learnt by classical and operant conditioning. Known as the two-process model (Hobart Mowrer, 1960).
This states that phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning.
How is a phobia acquired by classical conditioning?
Involves learning to associate something, of which we intially have no fear (Neutral stimulus), with something that already triggers fear (Unconditioned stimulus).
How was a phobia learnt by classical conditioning in the case of little albert?
Watson and Raynor 1920
The rat (NS) was presented with a loud noise (UCS).
The noise created fear (UCR).
When the rat (NS) and the loud noise (UCS) are experienced together, the NS becomes associated with the UCS and produce a fear response.
Leading to Albert experiencing fear (CR) when he is presented with a rat (CS).
What is a specific phobia?
A phobia of a specific object/event.
How is a phobia maintained by operant conditioning?
Behaviour is reinforced and punished. Reinforcement increases the chances of a behaviour occurring. So avoiding the phobia will supply a feeling of pleasure, negative reinforcement, therefore its more likely to be repeated.
What is a strength of the behavioural explanation?
Real world application:
Exposure therapies.
Being exposed to the phobic stimulus is beneficial as phobias are maintained by the avoidance of the stimulus. Once, the avoidance behaviour is prevented, the phobia is cured as it cant be reinforced by anxiety/avoidance.
This shows how valuable the two process model is as it identifies the means of treating phobias.
What is a limitation of the behavioural explanation?
Cognitive aspect of phobias:
Doesn’t account for the cognitive aspects of phobias.
Behavioural explanation says the key behaviour is avoidance but they have cognitive responses too.
Therefore, the two process model doesn’t completely explain the symptoms of phobias, it doesnt offer an adequate explanation of phobic cognitions.
What is another limitation of the behavioural explanation?
Phobias and traumatic experiences:
The little Albert study shows how a frightening experience involving a stimulus can lead to a phobia.
This evidence shows how there is a link between bad experiences and phobias.
73% of people with a fear of dentists had a traumatic experience, compared to a control group of 21% (Ad De Jongh 2006).
However, not all phobias are due to trauma. The association between phobias and a bad experiences are not as strong as we would expect if behavioural theories provided a full explanation.
