phobias Flashcards
What are phobias?
A type of anxiety disorder, characterised by:
‘Uncontrollable, extreme, irrational and enduring fears and involve anxiety levels that are out of proportion to any actual risk.’
What is the DSM and ICD?
the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
What are specific phobias?
A marked and persistent fear of specific things/environments
e.g .Animal phobias e.g. arachnophobia (fear of spiders)
What are social phobias?
A fear of social situations – a fear of negative judgement by others and feeling inadequate.
e.g. Performance phobias: being anxious about performing in public e.g. playing at a concert.
What is Agoraphobia?
Anxiety about being in open spaces or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing) or in which help may not be available in the event of having an situationally predisposed panic attack or panic like symptoms.
What are emotional characteristics of phobias?
Anxiety and emotional responses are unreasonable
What is the definition of anxiety?
Fear is marked and persistent, and is likely to be excessive, due to the presence of or anticipation of the phobic object/situation.
What is meant by emotional responses are unreasonable?
The emotional response is wildly disproportionate to the danger posed by the phobic object/situation
i.e. it goes beyond what is reasonable
What are behavioural characteristics of phobias?
Avoidance and Panic.
What is meant be avoidance?
Efforts are made to avoid coming into contact with the phobic stimulus in order to reduce the chances of an anxious response occurring e.g. avoid flying/social situations.
What is meant by panic?
Panic may involve a range of behaviours such as crying, screaming, freezing, running away, fainting, collapsing
What are cognitive characteristics of phobias?
Irrational beliefs:
A phobic may hold irrational beliefs in relation to the phobic stimuli e.g. if I get on that plane it will crash and I will die
Selective attention to the phobic stimulus:
A phobic will focus on the feared stimulus finding it difficult to concentrate on or think about anything else.
What is the two-process model?
Assumes that phobias are learned through experience.
The Two-Process Model (Orval Hobart Mowrer, 1947)
i) Acquisition (how the phobia was learnt initially)
- Through Classical Conditioning
ii) Maintenance (why the phobia persists) - Through Operant Conditioning
the acquisition of phobias is through…
Classical Conditioning: learning by association
- a stimulus becomes associated with a response
What is the process of classical conditioning in a phobia?
The feared stimulus/situation is originally a neutral stimulus.
It is paired/associated with an anxiety-provoking unconditioned stimulus (e.g. a traumatic event that triggers a fear response).
The feared [conditioned] stimulus/situation then triggers a conditioned response.
What is the case of little Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920)?
Little Albert (9 month old infant) was shown a white rat (neutral stimulus) no fearful response.
Little Albert cried when a hammer (unconditioned stimulus = loud noise) was struck against a steel bar behind his head.
Over 7 weeks, the white rat (NS) was presented and immediately followed by a hammer being struck against a metal bar close to Albert’s ear (UCS).
Little Albert began only to see the rat (CS) and immediately showed signs of fear (CR).
Little Albert’s phobia generalised to other white furry objects
e.g. a fur coat and a Santa Claus beard.
How are phobias maintained?
Operant Conditioning:
Learning through the consequences of behaviour.
If a behaviour is reinforced then that increases the chances of the behaviour being repeated.
What are the two types of reinforcement?
Positive Reinforcement:
An outcome of a behaviour that is pleasant
(results in a reward – the addition of a positive stimulus)
Negative Reinforcement:
An outcome of a behaviour that results in avoiding
something unpleasant (the removal of a negative stimulus)
How does positive reinforcement maintain phobias?
Positive Reinforcement:
The attention/comfort generated by the phobia positive reinforcer, increasing the likelihood that the behaviour (i.e. fear response) will occur again in the future.
How does negative reinforcement maintain phobias?
Negative Reinforcement:
The avoidance response means the individual can escape the fear and anxiety they would have otherwise suffered if they had encountered the feared stimulus/ situation negative reinforcer.
The reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour, maintaining the phobia.
What is the supporting evidence of the two-process model?
Di Gallo (1996)
Reported that around 20% of people who had experienced traumatic car accidents developed a phobia of travelling in cars, especially of travelling at speed, which can be explained by classical conditioning.
The neutral stimulus of a car became associated with the naturally occurring fear response (UCR) to the crash (UCS).
It was found that they tended to make avoidance responses (behavioural characteristic) e.g. staying at home rather than making car journeys to see friends – the maintenance of the phobia can therefore be explained by operant conditioning.
The avoidance response of saying at home was negatively reinforcing and therefore repeated, making the phobia resistant to extinction.
Evaluation of the Behavioural Approach to Explaining Phobias:
P: Effective treatments based on behaviourist principles have been developed to treat phobias.
E: Systematic Desensitisation and Flooding are based on the idea of counter-conditioning, breaking down the negative association between the stimulus and fear, replacing it with a more positive association. they also prevent the individual from practicing their avoidance behaviour, preventing reinforcement.
C: The fact that these treatments are successful suggests that phobias are maladaptive behaviours acquired by learning i.e. they can be unlearned by replacing them with more adaptive behaviours.
Evaluation of the Behavioural Approach to Explaining Phobias. P: There is research support for the role of classical conditioning in acquiring phobias.
E: The case of Little Albert (Watson and Raynor, 1920) supports the two-process model as they were able to condition Albert to develop a fear of white fluffy objects by pairing a previously neutral stimulus , a white rate, with a loud noise.
C: However it is difficult to generalise these findings because…
Limitations of the behavioural approach to explaining phobias:
P: however, the model is deterministic as not everyone who has a traumatic experience develops a phobia.
E: Di Nardo et al (1988): not everyone who is bitten by a dog develops a phobia of dogs - the behavioural approach cannot explain these individual differences. C: However, according to the diathesis model, a dog bite would only lead to a phobia in those people with a genetic vunerability i.e they carry a specific gene that codes for phobic/anxiety disorders.