Phobias Flashcards
What are the three characteristics of phobias?
Behavioural, emotional, cognitive.
Explain the 3 behavioural categories ?
Panic -A range of behaviours such as crying, screaming or running away from phobic stimulus.
Avoidance - effort to prevent contact with phobic stimulus .
Endurance- An alternative behaviour to avoidance. It involves remaining with the phobic stimulus and continuing to experience anxiety.
Explain the 3 Emotional characteristics ?
Anxiety - An unpleasant state of high arousal. Prevents the individual from relaxing and makes it very difficult to experience positive emotion.
Unreasonable emotional response - disproportionate to the threat proposed.
Fear- The immediate response when experience when we first encounter a phobic stimulus.
Explain the 3 cognitive characteristics ?
Cognitive distortions - The phobic perception of the phobic stimulus may be distorted( seeing a spider and seeing it as much bigger than it really is).
Selection attention - Finding it hard to look away from the phobic stimulus.
Irrational beliefs- beliefs that are not true or have no evidence.
What is the behaviourist approach?
Behaviourists believe we are born blank slates and all our behaviour is leaned from the environment. Behaviourist are interested in behaviour that is observable and can be measured. Behaviourists also believe behaviour is based on two main processes: classical conditioning and operant conditioning. classical conditioning is learning through association and operant conditioning is learning through consequences.
What is learning through association ?
Classical conditioning
What is learning through consequences?
Operant conditioning
What is being rewarded for a behaviour, increasing the likelihood the behaviour will be repeated?
Positive reinforcement
What is avoiding an unpleasant consequence for a behaviour, increasing the likelihood the behaviour will be repeated?
Negative reinforcement
What is a negative consequence for behaviour, decreasing the likelihood behaviour will be repeated?
Consequence.
What are the stages of Acquisition ?
Before conditioning - The Unconditioned stimulus triggers an unconditioned response.
During Conditioning - The neutral stimulus become associated with the unconditioned stimulus, producing a unconditioned response.
After conditioning - The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus, which produces a conditioned response.
What is Maintenance ?
Phobias are maintained through operant conditioning, which is learning through consequence. When a phobic avoids a phobic stimulus, they avoid anxiety that would have been experiences. This is an example of negative reinforcement.
What is the little Albert experiment ?
Watson and Rayner showed how a fear of rats could be conditioned into Little Albert, through classical conditioning.
BC- Albert had no response to the white rat NS. Whenever Albert played with the rat, a loud bang was made. The bang UCS caused a fear response UCR. The rat NS did not cause a fear response until the bang and the rat had been paired together 7 times. After the 7th times, Albert showed a fear response CS every time he came into contact with the rat now it is a CS.
Explain why a strength of the two- process model is it has research support?
De Jongh et al 2006 found that 73% of dental phobic had experienced a trauma involving dentistry, evidencing a link between bad and experience and phobias.
This research confirms that the association between stimulus (dentist) and a response (pain) does lead to a phobias, this increases the credibility of the two process model.
Explain why the behavioural explanation, like the two- process model, do not adequately account for the cognitive characteristics of phobias.
Because we know phobias have significant cognitive aspects such as cognitive distortions, irrational beliefs and selective attention and the two process only explain avoidance of the phobic stimulus.
What is an alternative explanation for phobias (PET)?
P suggests there are evolutionary as opposed to being learned.
E Biological preparedness means we may be pre-disposed to some phobia’s, such as snacks or spiders, which would have given human ancestors a survival advantage.
T This shows that there are more to phobia’s that simple conditioning, decreasing the credibility of the explanation.
What is a limitation to the two-process model?
p Not all individuals who experience a traumatic event go on to develop a phobia.
E for example car crashes are common in the UK, yet phobias of cars are not common.
T this means the two process model cannot explain why only some traumatic events led to phobias.
