Phobias

Phobia

Irrational fear of an object or situation

Phobias Behavioural characteristics

Panic, Avoidance and Endurance

phobias emotional characteristics

anxiety, fear, unreasonable response

Phobias Cognitive characteristics

selective attention, irrational beliefs and cognitive distortion

Explenation for phobias

Behaviourist approach, using the two process model

Aquisition by classical conditioning (cc)

involves learning to associate something of which we initially have no fear of (NS) with something that triggers a fear response(UCS)

The reaserch in explaining phobias

Watson and Ryner created a phobia in 9 month-old baby “little Albert”

Procedure of Little Albert(lA) study

lA was shown a rat (NS) reaserchers made a noise (UCS) creating a fear response (UCR),

lA learned associating them NS and UCS

This led to the NS becoming a CS (producing a CR)

The fear was generalised by showing lA furry objects

Maintainance by operant conditioning

When a behaviour is reinforced it increases the frequency of it. In case of negative reinforcement, avoiding an unplesant situation, suggests that when avoiding the phobic stimulus, escaping the fear succesfully reinforces avoidance maintaining the phobia

Ao3 for explaning phobias

✅-real world application, explains why ppl with a phobia benefit from being exposed to the phobic stimulus, avoidance prevents curing it

❌-there is no account for cognitive aspects, only considering behaviours, when ppl also hold irrational beliefs, this is not offering an adequate explenation for phobic cognitions, not complete

-not all phobias appear after a traumatic experience, very few have any experience for eg. with snakes. Also not all frightening experiences lead to phobias

Ways of treating phobias

Systematic desensitisation and flooding

Systematic desensitisation (SD)

1 creating an anxiety hierarcy

2 relaxation tecnique is learned

3 exposure to the phobic stimulus while in a relaxed state

Flooding

Immediate exposure to the phobic stimulus, without the option of avoiding

Through extinction the client learns there is no harm

Conditioned stimulus (dog) is encountered without the unconditioned stimulus (biting), will then no longer produce the conditioned response of fear

Ao3 for treating phobias SD

✅-evidence of effectiveness, Gilroy followed 42 ppl with spider phobia who had SD

The SD group was less fearful then a controlled group treated by relaxation

❌- going through the hierarchy takes longer whereas flooding is easyer and quicker

Ao3 for treating phobias w Flooding

✅- it is cost-effective, as it usually takes one session making it less time consuming and less costly meaning more accessible to everyone, as it can be more cost-effective than SD it is a better oprion

❌- Traumatic, evidence of this is Schumacher et al. found that ppts rated flooding as significantly more stressful than SD. The traumatic nature of flooding means that attrition (dropout) rates are higher.