The behavioural approach to explaining phobias - Evaluation
- Created by: Rosiem2102
- Created on: 21-03-18 21:26
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- Evaluation
- An incomplete explanation of phobias
- There are some aspects of phobic behaviour that require further explaining
- Bounton (2007) points out that evolutionary factors probably have an important role in phobias but the two factor theory does not mention this
- We easily acquire phobias of things that have been a source of danger in our evolutionary past, such as fears of snakes or the dark
- It is adaptive to acquire such fears
- Seligman (1971) called this biological preparedness - the innate predisposition to acquire certain fears
- However, it is quite rare to develop a fear of cars or guns, which are actually much more dangerous to most if us today than spiders or snakes
- Good explanatory power
- Went beyond Watson and Raynor's concept of classical conditioning
- Explained how phobias can be maintained over time
- Important implications for therapies because it explains why patients need to be exposed to a feared stimulus
- Once a patient is prevented from practising their avoidance behaviour the behaviour ceases to be reinforced and so it declines
- Alternative explanation for avoidance behaviour
- In more complex phobias like agoraphobia, not all avoidance behaviour seems to be a result of anxiety reduction
- Some avoidance behaviour seems to be motivated more by positive feelings of safety
- E.g: the motivating factor in choosing an action like not leaving the house is not so much to avoid the phobic stimulus but to stick with the safety factor
- This explains why some patients with agoraphobia are able to leave their house with a trusted person with relatively little anxiety but not on their own (Buck, 2010)
- An incomplete explanation of phobias
- Evaluation extra
- Phobias that don't follow trauma
- Sometimes phobias appear following a bad experience and it is easy to see how they could be a result of conditioning
- Sometimes people develop a phobia and are not aware of having had a related bad experience
- What about the cognitive aspects of phobias
- We know that behavioural explanations in general are orientated towards explaining behaviour rather than cognition
- Two-process model explains maintenance in terms of avoidance
- We also know that phobias have a cognitive element
- Presumably this is because they have only existed very recently so we are not biologically prepared to learn fear responses towards them
- Phobias that don't follow trauma
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