Phobias

Behavioural characteristics of phobias:

Panic, avoidance, endurance

Emotional characteristics of phobias:

Anxiety, unreasonable emotional responses

Cognitive characteristics of phobias:

Selective attention to phobic stimulus, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions

Two process model:

Mowrer argues phobias are learnt by classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning

E.g. Little Albert (9 months old) cl. conditioned a fear of a white rat with a frightening noise. Op. conditioned through avoidance because of the negative reinforcement of confronting the fear

Real-world application

Systematic desensitisation. Helps overcome phobias through confrontation, breaking the operant conditioning maintenance.

Limited explanation

Explains behavioural phobias through trauma. However, some people have phobias of snakes while never having seen one. Also, irrational cognitive beliefs are not explained.

Clear cause-effect link

Operant and classical conditioning experiments leave little room for confounding variables. Simple variables.

Systematic desensitisation:

Hierarchy of phobic stimulus. Classical conditioning is used to associate fear and relaxation. Maintaining a relaxed state is taught, then they are exposed to the fear while maintaining it over a few sessions.

Flooding:

Extreme exposure to your fear over short sessions. Allows for the realisation the fear is harmless (extinction). The client must be given fully informed consent.

Easier option - SD

Harder option - F

Not as traumatic as flooding and available for more people (e.g. with disabilities). More generalisable.

Flooding traumatic, not available for all. Unethical.

Too much time and money - SD

Time and cost effective - F

SD can take over 10 sessions to achieve what flooding does in one

Flooding is clinically effective (can take 1 session sometimes) and not costly.