3. AQA A-Level Psychology Key Content

what is a phobia

an irrational fear or an object or a situation

what are the 3 different types of phobias

• specific phobias - phobia of an object

• social anxiety / social phobia - failure of social situations e.g. public speaking

• agoraphobia - being outside or in a public place

what are the 3 different types of clinical characteristics of phobias

behavioural - how we act

emotional - how we feel

cognitive - how we think

what are behavioural characteristics of phobias

panic - in response to Prescence of phobia

avoidance - go to a lot of effort to prevent contact with phobia stimuli

what are cognitive characteristics of phobias

irrational beliefs - may have unfounded thoughts in relation to public stimulus

cognitive distortions - the perceptions of a person may be inaccurate or unrealistic

what are the emotional characteristics of phobias

anxiety - involve an emotional response

fear - immediate and extremely unpleasant response we experience when we encounter or think about the feared stimulus

what’s the difference between definitions, explanations and approaches

definitions - identify what behaviours are considered abnormal

explanations - try to explain how these behaviours came about

approaches - used to explain psychopathology

who created the 2 process model and what is it used for

Mowrer - explain how phobias are learned, classical conditioning explains how phobias are learned and operant conditioning explains how they are maintained

how does classical conditioning initiate a phobia

traumatic event causes innate fear response and therefore the NS becomes a CS and therefore causes the phobia

how did Watson and Rayner create a fear in little albert

Watson and Rayner created fear in Little Albert by using classical conditioning, repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus (a white rat) with an unconditioned stimulus (a loud noise made by striking a steel bar behind his head), and after several pairings Albert began to show a conditioned fear response to the rat alone, crying, avoiding it, and later generalising this fear to other similar furry objects such as a rabbit, dog, fur coat and Santa mask.

what happened with the stimulus to make little Alberts fear worse

stimulus generalisation - he ended up fearing other furry objects e.g. no white rabbit

what tends to happen overtime and what prevents this

classical conditioned fears tend to extinguish overtime and is prevented by reinforcement via operant conditioning

how does operant conditioning explain avoidance in phobias

phobic response of fear and anxiety is unpleasant - person avoids it to avoid those feelings - rewarding outcome results in repeating behaviour - fear becomes maintained

what are the strengths of the behavioural approach

practical application - led to treatments such as systematic desensitisation and flooding which aim to unlearn origins (cc) and maintenance (OC)

DiNardo et al found that over 60% of people with a phobia of dogs could relate their rear to a frightening experience, supporting the 2 process model