Psychopathology - Phobias

Question 1

What are the behavioural characteristics of phobias?

Answer 1

Avoidance when faced with the object or situation their response is to avoid the object, this can interfere with the persons normal daily life, such as social/occupational activities. People might avoid places where they might see the phobic object.

endurance: freeze/faint when a person is stressed, the bodily response is fight or flight. When faced with the object, the person might freeze or faint instead.

Disruption of functioning: anxiety and avoidance created by the phobia might be so extreme, that it interferes with the persons ability to function socially, or at work

Panic: the person with the phobia might panic in the presence of the stimulus they may show behavioural characteristics, such as crying, screaming, vomiting, running away

Question 2

What are the cognitive characteristics of phobias?

Answer 2

irrational: the person will think in an irrational man about the phobia, and they will resist rational arguments that counter it

Insight: the person will know that they fear is excessive or unreasonable, but they still find it difficult not to fear the object

Cognitive distortion: the person will have a distorted perception of the stimulus. For example, they might view snakes as alien and aggressive.

Selective attention: when the person in count as a phobic stimulus, they cannot look away, and they will ignore everything around them, and just focus on the phobic situation

Question 3

Define phobia

Answer 3

Phobia is a mental disorder, characterised by high levels of anxiety in response to a stimulus. It is an irrational fear. They may avoid the phobic object, or any situations where the phobic object is likely to be.

Question 4

Define the behavioural approach to explaining phobias (classical and operant conditioning and the two process model)

Answer 4

The behavioural model suggests that all behaviour, including phobias can be learnt and people who have an abnormality can learn negative behaviours

Question 5

What are the two steps in the two process model?

Answer 5

The first step is that the phobia is learnt via classical conditioning or social learning

The second step is that the phobia is maintained by operant conditioning

Question 6

Describe the process of classical conditioning (little albert)

Answer 6

This method of learning involves building up an association between two different stimuli is that learning takes place
- First, a neutral stimulus with no interaction is presented to a person in this case, a white rat
- Then an unconditioned stimulus is presented, which makes a person have an emotional response. A loud banging noise which make someone cry.
- Then we repeatedly pair the two stimuli it together many times until classical conditioning and learning takes place. This is repeated six times in Little Albert.
- We can then present the unconditioned stimulus which would be the white rat alone, and a person will have an emotional response which would be the conditioned response. learning has taken place via classical conditioning and an association has been established

Question 7

What was the study done on classical conditioning?

Answer 7

The study was “Little Albert” (1920) by Watson and Rayner
- They used an 11-month-old child

Question 8

Define generalisation

Answer 8

In classical conditioning, the tendency to transfer response from one stimulus to another that is quite similar

Question 9

Define recondition

Answer 9

To eliminate the conditioned response

Question 10

Evaluate classical conditioning

Answer 10

The study was only conducted once and cannot be repeated nowadays due to ethical concerns. Therefore the findings are not very reliable as they have not been repeated. Therefore it could be questioned whether the same results could be reproduced

King (1998) supports. The idea is proposed by classical conditioning from review in case studies. He has found that children acquire phobias by encountering traumatic experiences, e.g. getting bitten by a dog.

A disadvantage of classical conditioning is that some people do have traumatic experiences, but then do not go on to develop phobias, so classical conditioning does not explain how all phobias develop

The psychologist Menzies criticises the behavioural model because he studied people that had hydrophobia and only 2% of his sample had encountered a negative experience with water, therefore 98% had never had a negative experience involving water, meaning they had not learnt to become frightened of it by classical conditioning

Question 11

Define the social learning theory

Answer 11

This is based on observational learning where young children might observe a reaction from parents or family and copy these reactions.
The psychologist Minneka found that when one monkey in a cage showed a fear response to snakes the other monkeys, copying this behaviour. This example can be applied to humans.

Question 12

Define operant conditioning

Answer 12

This method involves learning a new response that can result in reinforcement
- negative reinforcement would be when if the person is scared of snakes, they will avoid snakes to reduce the risk that they will feel fair
- Positive reinforcement would be by avoiding snakes are not feeling fear they feel rewarded. Therefore avoidance continues.

Question 13

Evaluate the two process model

Answer 13

One limitation is it ignores other factors that could cause phobias, for example, biological or evolutionary factors, such as being predisposed genetically to develop a phobia

One strength of this theory is that it can be successful when explaining how it phobia can occur in animals and young children. However, social learning is therefore not very strong and explaining how adults can learn to have these phobias. The behavioural model is limited to young children and animals.

One strength of this theory is that Bandura supports the idea of social learning theory because a piece of research was conducted where if one person acted as if they were in pain when I was a sounded and participants watch this reaction the participants would then show the same response when given a chance to hear the sound of the buzzer (they would act as if they were in pain)

Another advantage would be the fact that it involves to clear steps that highlight how phobias are learned and then maintained. They are learned by powerful classical conditioning or social learning and then I’ll maintained by operant conditioning. This is very accurate.

Question 14

What is the behavioural approach to explaining phobias?

Answer 14

Classical and operant conditioning and the two process model

Question 15

What is the behavioural approach to treating phobias?

Answer 15

Systematic, desensitisation and flooding

Question 16

Outline systematic desensitisation: who was it developed by and how does it work

Answer 16

This is a behavioural therapy developed by Wolpe (1958) to diminish phobias by using classical conditioning. A person with a phobia experiences fear and anxiety. SD uses classical conditioning to replace the irrational fears and anxieties with a calm and relaxed response. This is counter conditioning. Reciprocal inhibition is when the person cannot feel two opposite emotions at the same time.
- relaxation techniques are taught
- hierarchy of fear is constructed
- gradual exposure

Question 17

Describe the process of systematic desensitisation

Answer 17

First a hierarchy of fear is constructed by the therapist and the patient. Situations involving the phobic object are ranked from least fearful to most fearful. For example, looking at a picture of the phobic object to being in physical contact with it.

The second step is teaching the patient deep muscle relaxation techniques. Deep, breathing, progressive, muscular relaxation (PMR) is taught. PMR is when the person tenses up a group of muscles as tight as possible and then relax them so that the patient is relaxed as possible and this is done from bottom to top or vice versa. This is also paired with deep, breathing meditation, or imagining relaxing situations.

The third step is gradual exposure where the patient is introduced to the phobic object gradually, and with a work at the fair hierarchy, starting with the least frightening stage, and they must use a relaxation technique whilst being exposed to the phobic object. Once they’re comfortable at their current stage, they move up a stage. Eventually through repeated exposure with relaxation. The phobia is eliminated.

Question 18

What are the strengths of systematic desensitisation

Answer 18

One strength of SD is that Jones, (1924) supports the use of ST to eradicate little Peters phobia. Where are the white rabbit was presented to Little Peter gradually at closer distances and each time his anxiety levels lessened. He eventually developed affection for the rabbit, and it shows how SD can work to eliminate phobias.

Another advantage is Klosko Et al. (1990) supports the use of SD. He assessed various therapies for the treatment of panic disorders and found 87% of patients were panic free after receiving ASD, whereas 50% receiving medication 36% receiving a placebo and 33% receiving no treatment at all.

Another advantage is SD has advantages of being less traumatic than other therapies for example, flooding. Therefore, SD has less ethical implications than other types of behavioural therapies

Question 19

Define flooding

Answer 19

Flooding involves directly, exposing the phobic patient to the third object in an immediate situation. They will have been taught relaxation techniques beforehand. However, there is no gradual buildup and flooding involves immediate exposure. This can be done “in vivo “which means for real or it could be virtual, flooding stops phobic responses quickly because the patient cannot choose to avoid the object they might quickly learn. The object is harmless and therefore extinction occurs. In some cases. The patient may be so exhausted by their own fear response that the response diminishes. Flooding is ethical because even though there is a great deal of psychological harm, the patient gives a written fully informed consent.. flooding sessions last 2 to 3 hours

Question 20

Evaluate flooding

Answer 20

One advantage of flooding is that it is cost-effective compared to some therapies which take months or years to work. It is a quick therapy which makes treatment cost, effective and cheaper.

One disadvantage is that it is less effective for curing some types of phobias, such as social phobia because there are more cognitive aspects that flooding cannot address very well. social phobia can be cured more successfully by cognitive therapies

Another disadvantage is that it is a highly traumatic experience. Many patients may be unwilling to continue with the therapy until the end and time and money might be wasted, preparing the patience for flooding only for the patient to decide they do not want to take part.

One advantage is that Ost (1997) stated that flooding is an effective and rapid treatment especially when the patient is encouraged to continue self directed exposure to the third object. This can be applied to every day life outside of the therapy situation and there are immediate improvements.

Question 21

What are the emotional characteristics of phobias?

Answer 21

persistent, excessive and unreasonable fear may be felt in the presence of the stimulus and this can be long lost. The first response might be immediate, and they may also have feelings of worry about death.

Panic and anxiety: the person will feel highly anxious, and may experience unpleasant feelings when faced with a phobic situation

Question 22

What are the weaknesses of systematic desensitisation

Answer 22

Disadvantage of SD is that it isn’t always practical for individuals to be desensitised by confronting real life a bit situations for example, when someone is scared of sharks, therefore it might be difficult to apply in real life situations

Another disadvantage is that although behavioural treatments address the symptoms of phobias, some critics believe the underlying causes of the phobia will remain and in the future symptoms or return or symptoms substitution will occur and abnormal behaviours will replace the ones that have been removed