phobias

Question 1

what is a phobia?

Answer 1

a group of mental disorders characterized by high levels of anxiety in response to a particular stimulus or group of stimuli. the anxiety interferes with normal living.

Question 2

what are the 3 types of phobia?

Answer 2

specific - phobia of an object e.g spiders
social - phobia of a social situation e.g public speaking
agoraphobia - phobia of being outside or in a public space

Question 3

emotional characteristics of phobias

Answer 3

anxiety and fear - fear is an immediate experience when a phobic encounters or thinks about the phobic stimulus - fear leads to anxiety

responses are unreasonable - response is widely disproportionate to the threat posed e.g. an arachnophobia will have a strong emotional response to a tiny spider

Question 4

behavioural characteristics of phobias

Answer 4

panic - involve behaviours such as crying, screaming, running away from phobic stimulus

avoidance - considerable effort to avoid coming into contact with the phobic stimulus - can make it hard to go about everyday life especially if phobic stimulus is often seen

endurance - sufferer remains in the presence of the phobia - they are still suffering high levels of anxiety

Question 5

cognitive characteristics of phobias

Answer 5

selective attention to the phobic stimulus - phobic finds it hard to look away from the phobic stimulus

irrational beliefs - e.g social phobias may involve beliefs such as ‘if i blush people will think im weak’

cognitive distortions - perception of phobia is worse than what it is

Question 6

what are the main behaviourist ideas when explaining phobias?

Answer 6

• only the behaviour is important - focus on external behaviours
• abnormal behaviours are learned through conditioning or social learning
• the environment can reinforce maladaptive behaviour

Question 7

two process model - who proposed it and what was it?

Answer 7

developed by mowrer who argued phobias are formed in 2 stages:
stage 1 - classical conditioning - phobia acquired through association
stage 2 - operant conditioning - phobia maintained through reinforcement

Question 8

social learning theory

Answer 8

phobias may also be acquired through modelling the behaviour of others e.g a parent woth an extreme fear may leada child to acquire a similar behaviour because it appears rewarding i.e fearful person gets attention

Question 9

operant conditioning

Answer 9

avoidance of the phobic stimulus reduces fear and is thus reinforcing (negative reinforcement) - escaping from an unpleasant situation - the individual avoids the anxiety which leads to positive reinforcement