Psychopathology - Phobia Flashcards
What is a phobia?
An irrational fear of an object, place or situation.
What are the DSM-5 phobia categories?
Specific phobia
Social phobia
Agoraphobia
What is a specific phobia?
Phobia of an object, such as an animal or body part, or a situation such as flying or having an injection.
What is social phobia?
Social anxiety, phobia of a social situation such as public speaking or using a public toilet.
What is agoraphobia?
Phobia of being outside or in a public place.
What are the behavioural characteristics of a phobia?
Panic - crying, screaming, running away, freezing etc…
Avoidance - putting a lot of effort into preventing coming into contact with the phobic stimulus.
Endurance - person chooses to remain in contact with phobic stimulus e.g. keeping an eye on a spider in the room rather than leaving the room.
What are the emotional characteristics of a phobia?
Anxiety - unpleasant state of high arousal. Less intense but more long term than fear.
Fear - immediate and extreme unpleasant response on encountering a phobic stimulus. More intense and more short term than anxiety.
Unreasonable and disproportionate emotional response to phobic stimulus.
What are the cognitive characteristics of a phobia?
Selective attention to phobic stimulus - important survival mechanism for when something is actually dangerous, however not useful when fear is irrational like with a phobia.
Irrational beliefs - hold unfounded thoughts in relation to the phobic stimuli.
Cognitive distortions - a person with a phobia may have inaccurate and unrealistic perceptions.
What approach is used to explain phobias?
The behavioural/behaviourist approach (learning theory) - a way of explaining behaviour in terms of what is observable and in terms of learning.
What is the two-process model?
An explanation for the onset (creation) and persistence (maintenance) of disorders that create anxiety such as phobias. The two processes are classical conditioning for onset and operant conditioning for persistence.
Who proposed the two-process model?
Mowrer 1960
How are phobias learnt using classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning is learning by the repeated pairing of an unconditioned stimulus UCS with a neutral stimulus NS so that the NS eventually produces the same response that was initially produced by the UCS alone making it a conditioned stimulus with a conditioned response. With phobias, this response is fear and the stimulus is the phobia stimulus e.g. spiders.
What research supports classical conditioning as a means of learning a phobia?
Watson and Rayner 1920 and their Little Albert case study. White rate associated with a loud bang when Albert goes near it. Albert associates rat with the fear of the loud noise. His phobia was generalised to similar objects such as a non-white rabbit, a fur coat, and a santa claus beard made of cotton balls.
How are phobias maintained using operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning is maintaining a behaviour by its consequences. For phobias, the learnt consequence is negative reinforcement, when an individual avoids a situation/object that involves the phobic stimulus. This reduces fear and reinforces the behaviour to avid the phobia therefore maintaining the phobia.
Give 2 strengths of the two-process model as an explanation for phobias.
Real-world application in exposure therapies…systematic desensitisation and flooding…forcing participants to reassociate phobic stimulus with relaxation and reducing avoidance so phobia is no longer maintained and is faced.
Links to traumatic experiences that created phobias. Often people who are scared of something have had a bad experience with it once before e.g. the dentist. This was investigated by Ad De Jongh (2006). COUNTERPOINT - Not all phobias are a result of a bad experience, some phobias are actually a result of the unknown! e.g. no experience with snakes or dangerous spiders in England but many people are afraid because they’re so uncommon! Therefore association between experience and phobia isn’t strong enough to provide a full explanation.
