Phobias

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What type of disorder are phobias?

What type of disorder are phobias?

Anxiety disorder

What is a phobia?

An uncontrollable, extreme, irrational fear that involves out of proportion anxiety levels to the actual risk - around 10% occurrence and are very long lasting, generating in childhood.

Sufferers realise their fear reaction is irrational but they cannot consciously control them.

What are behavioural symptoms of phobias?

Avoidant/anxiety response - efforts made to avoid the feared object to reduce the chance of an anxiety response.

Disruption of functioning - anxiety is so extreme it interferes with the ability to conduct everyday social functioning.

What are emotional symptoms of phobias?

Persistent, excessive fear - high levels of anxiety due to presence/anticipation of feared object.

Fear from exposure to phobic stimulus - e.g. crying, panic attacks, fainting, freezing, etc.

What are cognitive symptoms of phobias?

Recognition of exaggerated anxiety - awareness that the anxiety response is overstated in relation to the feared stimulus.

What are the subtypes of phobias?

Simple - specific things e.g. buttons

Social - involve social situations

Agoraphobia - fear of leaving home

How do behaviourist approaches explain phobias?

As being learnt through experience via association - the two process model

What is the two-process model?

1. The onset of phobias through classical conditioning e.g. experiencing a traumatic event or social learning theory e.g. witnessing someone experience a traumatic event.

   1. The maintenance of phobias through operant conditioning, reinforcing the phobic response.

How is classical conditioning involved in the acquisition of phobias?

Where a natural response (UCR) of fear becomes associated with a neutral stimulus so that the neutral stimulus produces a conditioned fear response (CR).

How is operant conditioning involved in the maintenance of phobias?

Avoiding the feared stimulus acts as a negative reinforces (the reward being the reduction of anxiety) - this makes the avoidance response more likely to occur again, becoming stronger each time and more resistant to extinction.

What did Watson and Rayner (1930) study?

Through classical and operant conditioning, they created a phobic response to white rats in an 11 months of old baby - Little Albert.

This supports the idea that phobias are learnt.

What are strengths of the behaviourist explanation of phobias?

Effectiveness of behaviourist treatments e.g. systematic desensitisation.

Can be combined with biological approach - genetic vulnerability of some individuals in developing phobias.

What are limitationss of the behaviourist explanation of phobias?

Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event develops a phobia to it.

Phobias can be explained as an evolutionary response e.g. fear of fire, animals can be a survival advantage as avoiding this could save your life.

What are treatments of phobias based on the idea of?

That if phobias are learnt behaviours then it is possible to replace them with adaptive behaviours based on reversing the techniques of conditioning.

What is systematic desensitisation?

The idea that anxiety and relaxation cannot co-exist - reciprocal inhibition.

Sufferer creates a hierarchy of situations with the feared object from most to least catastrophic. They are then taught relaxation techniques to apply after each situation as they work through them.

What is flooding?

Technique by Ost (1997) where instead of step-by-step they go straight to the most catastrophic situation but don’t allow the patient to make their normal avoidance response - the idea is that anxiety must reach a peak and eventually will subside.

What are limitations of phobia treatment techniques?

SD only suitable for those with a vivid imagination

Treatments less affective with social phobias/agoraphobia

Ethical considerations

Flooding not suitable for those in bad physical health