Phobias : Behavioural Approach to Explaining Phobias Flashcards
What is the behavioural approach to explaining phobias ?
It suggests that all behaviour can be learnt, and people who have an abnormality posses maladaptive and negative behaviours. Humans and animals can learn negative behaviours via classical conditioning, social learning theory and operant conditioning.
What is the two step model?
The phobia is learnt via classical conditioning or social learning.
The phobia is maintained by operant conditioning.
Describe how classical conditions works
It involves building up an association between two different stimuli so that learning takes place.
Example :
- white rat ( neutral stimulus ) is present to a person on it own
- loud banging noise ( unconditioned stimulus ) is presented which makes the person cry or have an emotional response
- two stimuli are repeatedly paired together and the person will have an emotional response when they hear the the loud noise and see the rat
- white ran ( conditioned stimulus ) can then be presented alone and the person will have an emotional response ( conditioned response )
What are the negatives of classical conditioning?
The study on little Albert was only conducted once and the findings have not been repeated ( not very reliable ).
Some people do have a traumatic experience such as a car accident. However, many people do not then go on to develop a phobia of cars and driving, so classical conditioning does not explain how all phobias develop. The opposite is also true - some people have a phobia but have never had a negative experience with them.
A psychologist studied people that have hydrophobia and found that only 2% of his sample had encountered a negative experience with water. Therefore 98% of his sample had hydrophobia but never had a negative experience. Therefore it wasn’t caused by classical conditioning.
What are the positives of classical conditioning?
A psychologist focussed on a woman who had a phobia for running water due to her feet getting stuck in some rocks unear a waterfall. Eventually she recovered from her phobia, but the sound of running water became associated with fear and the phobia returned.
Another psychologist reviewed case studies and found that children acquire phobias by encountering traumatic experiences with the phobic object.
Describe the social learning theory
This is based on observational learning whereby children might observe a reaction that their parents or family have to a particular situation and the child will copy this behaviour.
The psychologist Minneka found that when one monkey in a cage showed a fear response to snake, the other monkeys in the cage copied this response and also showed a fear repsonse to snakes.
How are phobias maintained?
Operant conditioning : either positive or negative reinforcement
Positive reinforcement - when someone has a phobia, they will try to avoid the phobic object in order to reduce the risk that they feel fear
Negative reinforcement - by avoiding the phobic object and not feeling fear, it is rewarding. Therefore avoidance continues.
What are the negatives of the two process model?
It ignores other factors that could cause phobias. It focuses on learning and the environment, but does not take into account biological or evolutionary factors. Some people may have more of a genetic vulnerability to develop phobias than others but the model ignores this.
It is not very strong in explaining how adults can learn to have phobias. Therefore it is limited to only explaining learning in young children and animals only.
What are the positives of the two step model?
A piece of research was conducted where a person acted as if they were in pain when a buzzer sounded, and participants had to watch this reaction. Later on when participants heard the same buzzer noise, they showed the same response.
It involves two clear steps that highlight how phobias are learned and how they are maintained. The process seems an accurate way of explaining how phobias can be learnt overall.
