psychopathology- phobias

Question 1

what is a phobia?

Answer 1

phobias are a type of anxiety disorder. anxiety is an emotion all people experience and is a natural response to potentially dangerous stimuli but phobias are characterised by uncontrollable, extreme, irrational and enduring fears and involve anxiety levels that are out of proportion to any actual risk

Question 2

behavioural characteristics
(how we behave as a result of the phobia)

Answer 2

• panic: leads to behaviours such as running away (flight response), crying or screams. a child may cling to a parent in panic
• avoidance: as confrontation with feared objects and situations produce high anxiety responses, efforts are made to avoid the feared objects and situations in order to reduce the chances of such anxiety responses occurring
• endurance: the phobic object is endured/ experienced with high anxiety. the person may freeze until the object/ situation is gone

Question 3

emotional characteristics
(how we feel because of our phobia)

Answer 3

persistent, excessive fear and anxiety: phobias produce high levels of anxiety due to the presence of an anticipation of (thinking about) feared objects and situations. the level of emotional responsible is unreasonable and out of proportion to the actual threat or danger

Question 4

cognitive characteristics
(how we think or our beliefs about the phobia)

Answer 4

• irrational beliefs about the phobic stimulus: a person with a social phobia may have the beleif that “if i blush people will think im really weak” and this increases the pressure felt in a social situation
• recognition of exaggerated anxiety: generally people who suffer from phobias are consciously aware that the anxiety levels they experience in relation to their feared object or situation are overstated
• hypervigilance: people with phobias are constantly thinking about the phobic stimulus (even when its not there)

Question 5

the behavioral approach to explaining phobias

Answer 5

mowrer’s two process model is a behaviourist explanation of the development of phobias. according to behaviourists, phobias are just a conditioned response to a stimulus that was firstly encountered during a frightening situation.

Question 6

process 1: classical conditioning

Answer 6

the acquisition (onset) of phobias is seen as occuring directly through classical conditioning. this type of learning can explain the acquisition of phobias, where a natural response that causes fear becomes associated with a neutral stimulus so that the neutral association by itself causes a fear response. the initiation of a phobia is often accidental. fear is associated with an object or situation merley because the occur simultaneously. this explains why phobias are often of unusual objects

Question 7

process 2: operant conditioning

Answer 7

the maintenance of phobias is due to reinforcement: operant conditioning explains how phobias are maintained, as when avoidance responses are made the fear response is reduced, the reduction in anxiety is thus rewarding and therfore avoidance behaviours are repeated. if a person had a phobia of the dark because they had a traumatic experience, like bieng mugged at night time, then the person might sleep with the light on, which is negatively reinforcing as it reduces the fear response associated with bieng in the dark. this increases the liklehood of the person sleeping with the lights on because anxiety is not experienced. phobias therefore become very resistant to extinction because the sufferer constantly making reinforcing avoidant responses

Question 8

support for the behavioural approach

Answer 8

the acquisition phase of the two process model is supported through evidence. for example, watson and rayner (1920) found that they could cause a phobia in a baby by repeatedly pairing loud, scary noises with a white rat. this supports the model because it demonstrates a clear cause and effect relationship between the noise and the fear that is associated with the rat- a fear that wasnt previously there. this study therfore illustrates how phobias are acquired through classical conditioning as the model suggests.

Question 9

limitation for the behavioural approach

Answer 9

evidence has found that not all phobias appear after a frightening experience, munjack (1984) found that only 50% of people with a driving phobia had a traumatic experience whilst driving, which means that there were 50% with a phobia that was not tied to a frightening event. furthermore, some common phobias such as snake phobias occur in populations where very few people have any experience of snakes let alone traumatic experiences involving snakes.