Summary Behavioural approach to explaining phobias (psychopathology) with evaluation

Psychopathology

Behavioural Approach to Explaining Phobias:

The Two Process Model - how phobias are learnt in classical conditioning and how it is
maintained in operant conditioning

Classical Conditioning:

 phobia is acquired through association
 the association between a neutral stimuli (something that never scared you before like
a white mouse) and an unconditional stimuli which produces a fear response
unconditionally (like a loud bang which has always made you scared)
 by pairing the NS with the UCS, the NS starts to produce a conditioned response
(fear) because the loud bang produces a UCR
 you now have a phobia of the white rat because you associate it with fear
 this phobia can also be generalised to other furry white objects like a white rabbit or a
fur coat etc

Operant Conditioning:

 phobia of a stimuli is maintained through operant conditioning
 the likelihood of a behaviour repeating, increases if the outcome is rewarding
 the likelihood of the behaviour (which is avoidance of a phobic stimuli) repeating,
increases because it reduces fear and is therefore reinforcing (negative reinforcement)
 the individual therefore avoids the anxiety created by the phobic stimuli by avoiding it
completely, and maintaining their phobia for that thing

Social Learning:

 neo-behaviourist explanation
 phobia is acquired through modelling the behaviour of others
 eg) a child will develop a phobia of spiders because they saw their mother respond to
it with extreme fear and get a reward - attention from others