Behavioural Explanations of Phobias

What is the DSM-5?

Diagnostic tool used by medical professionals to diagnose patients

What are phobias categorised as?

Anxiety disorder that causes irrational fear

3 clinical characteristics

Behavioural

Emotional

Cognitive

Behavioural characteristics

Avoidance

Panic

Emotional characteristics

Anxiety

Fear

Cognitive characteristics

Selective attention

Irrational beliefs

What did Mowrer propose?

Two-process model

What does the two-process model explain?

Phobias are learned through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning

How does classical conditioning explain phobias

Associates two stimuli together to learn a response

Key experiment for classical conditioning

Little Albert

Who did the Little Albert experiment?

Watson and Rayner

Little Albert aim

If a human infant could learn fear through classical conditioning

Little Albert Method

White rat paired with a loud noise until 9-month-old Little Albert got scared of the rat without the noise

Little Albert findings

Fear extended to other furry objects

Demonstrated stimulus generalisation

Little Albert applications

Teaching example for understanding how phobias might develop

Illustrates principles of classical conditioning

Little Albert criticism

Methodological weakness

Raised ethical concerns (lack of consent and failure to reverse the fear)

How does operant conditioning explain phobias?

Phobias are maintained through negative reinforcement

Strengths of two-process model

Research support (Little Albert)

Positive implications --> develops ideas e.g. systematic deprivation and flooding, combining behaviourist explanations with biological ones give better understanding of phobias

Limitations of two-process model

Oversimplified --> ignores role of cognition

Not all phobias