 What is a phobia?  An exaggerated fear of an object or situation  The fear is irrational – the fear of the thing is greater than the risk posed by the thing itself.

 Spiders  Social Phobia (afraid of being with people)  Flying  Open spaces  Small spaces  Heights  Being sick/vomiting  Cancer  Thunderstorms  Death and dead things

 Does anyone have a phobia?  How do you think phobias could be learned?  Who did we learn about who was given a phobia?  Little Albert

 According to behaviourists, phobias are learned, just like any other behaviour  Fill in the gaps to show how a phobia could have been conditioned. Chose one of the following:  John has a phobia of dogs. This is because he was once attacked by a dog  If you have a phobia yourself, explain how a negative experience caused that phobia  Make up a phobia, and explain how it came about

 Before conditioning UCSUCR (being attacked)(Fear) NSNo Response (dog)

 During conditioning UCSNSUCR (being attacked) (dog) (fear and pain)  After conditioning CSCR (dog)(fear)

 It was first developed by Wolpe (1958) and is used in the treatment of phobias.  Phobias come about through classical conditioning, but are maintained through operant conditioning.  People avoid what they are afraid of.  Less stressful than flooding

 AIM: This therapy aims to extinguish an undesirable behaviour fear by replacing it with a more desirable one: relaxation.  Link with the assumptions? The beh. approach assumes that all behaviour is learned from the environment. Therefore, we can unlearn conditioned responses by manipulating the environment.

 What is reciprocal inhibition?  We can not feel fear and relaxation at the same time, as the two emotions are not compatible.

 Read the description of the process of SD

 In vivo: direct experience  In vitro: using visualisation  TASK  Name some phobias which you would use in vivo and in vitro for.

 SD uses CC. Feared stimuli are conditioned through therapy to be associated with relaxation. This will lead to extinction of the fear response  SD uses generalisation. It is impossible for the therapist to account for every possible fearful situation. Relaxation learned should be generalisable to other similar stimuli.

 In pairs, come up with a hierarchy of fear for any phobia  In vivo or in vitro?

 What did Capafons et al (1998) find?  What did Klein et al (1983) find?

 McGrath (1990) found that SD is successful for a wide range of anxiety disorders, with 75% of patients with phobias responding to treatment.

 Create a flyer for a clinic which treats phobias with SD.  Must contain the following information  The aim of the therapy and how it works  The process of the therapy  An example of the therapy in action  Research evidence which supports it’s effectiveness  It must be written so that someone with no knowledge of psychology could understand it

 FGE7QELQ FGE7QELQ  How would you help this woman?