AQA Phobias

Specific phobias -answers: A persistent, irrational fear of a specific object or situation. Social phobias -answers: An excessive and persistent fear of particular social situations. Agoraphobia -answers: Having anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape may be difficult. Behavioural Explanation for phobias -answers: Two Process Theory (Mowrer) - Classical Conditioning + Operant Conditioning Social Learning Theory Classical Conditioning -answers: Fears are acquired when an individual associates a neutral stimulus with a fear response. Operant Conditioning -answers: Positive reinforcement: strengthens phobia by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding Negative reinforcement: individuals avoid a negative consequence which strengthens phobia. Social Learning Theory -answers: Extreme fears may be acquired through modelling the extreme behaviours of others. Fearful response from the model often results in a positive reward such as attention. Watson and Raynor -answers: Conducted an experiment on Little Albert. Presented him with white rat and he showed no fear - when reached to touch the rat researchers made a loud noise behind him. Noise upset Albert who soon became fearful of the rat because he had associated the rat with the loud noise Evolutionary Explanation for Phobias -answers: Some stimuli are more likely to be feared than others such as snakes and darkness. Ancient fears posed a real danger to ancestors and modern fears are an exaggeration of these. Preparedness -answers: Seligman suggested that animals are biologically prepared to rapidly learn and associate between particular stimuli and fear. Psychological Treatment for Phobias -answers: •Behavioural - Systematic Desensitisation •Behavioural - Flooding Systematic Desensitisation -answers: 1) Gradual process 2)Patient taught stress management techniques 3)Patient creates hierarchy Muscular relaxation is induced and patient works through the hierarchy gradually applying relaxation. Systematic Desensitisation strength - Supporting research evidence -answers: McGrath et al reported 75% patients with phobias responded to systematic desensitisation Contradictory research evidence against systematic desensitisation -answers: Ohman et al suggested systematic desensitisation may not be effective on phobias with underlying evolutionary cause. Symptom Substitution -answers: A limitation of Behavioural Treatments: the original phobia is 'cured' but the patient develops a different phobia Two-process model -answers: States phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and maintained by operant conditioning Mowrer (1960) -answers: Proposed the two-process model, suggesting classical conditioning causes phobias and operant conditioning causes them to continue Classical conditioning -answers: Behaviourists believe this is what causes phobias; an association between an unpleasant experience and a neutral stimulus occurs, which results in the development of a conditioned fear response. Operant conditioning -answers: Behaviourists believe this is what maintains phobias; people get a 'reward' of anxiety relief by avoiding a stimulus (negative reinforcement), and also comfort from peers (positive reinforcement) Little Albert -answers: Watson and Rayner were able to cause this subject to fear white rats and similar stimuli through classical conditioning Negative Reinforcement -answers: This occurs when a phobic sufferer is 'rewarded' for avoiding a stimulus. The reward is a lack of fear / anxiety. This then encourages them to repeat their avoidance behaviour in order to achieve less fear / anxiety in the future Anxiety reduction -answers: The two-process model claims phobias are maintained by this need. Safe -answers: Critics of the behaviourist theory of phobias suggest afflictions such as agoraphobia are better explained through the motivation of to be _____ rather than to reduce anxiety / fear. This would explain why some agoraphobics can leave the house if accompanied. Bounton (2007) -answers: Pointed out that evolutionary factors are not considered in the two-process model but likely have a significant role in phobias. Seligman (1971) -answers: Suggested we have innate biological preparedness which causes us to fear certain stimuli more, as fear helped our ancestors to survive. This would explain why fears of animals (especially snakes or spiders) are common and why fears of modern threats are less common (e.g. guns or cars). Innate biological preparedness -answers: Seligman suggested we have __________ _____________ ____________________ which causes us to fear certain stimuli more as fear helped our ancestors to survive - this would explain why fears of animals (especially snakes or spiders) are common and why fears of modern threats are less common (e.g. guns or cars).