The Cause of Phobias

The Cause of Phobias

Thesis:

We are not born with phobias – a phobia is learnt because it has

become associated with an object or an experience that is unpleasant.

According to the behaviourist, a phobia has to be learnt. This can

happen in one of two ways: classical or operant conditioning.

Classical conditioning is where an object/experience becomes

associated with something unpleasant or causes pain/fear. J Watson

and R Rayner tested this in a controversial experiment in 1920, in the

case of little Albert.

The stimulus may be all kinds of things, an object, a person or a

sound. By itself it has no effect but once it has become associated

with the UCS (unconditional stimulus) and it causes a response, as the

white rat did with little Albert; it is called the conditional

stimulus (CS) because the person has become conditioned to it and a

conditional response occurs (CR).

If this response then occurs with other similar objects, then the

conditioning has become generalised.

Operant conditioning is where we learn from the consequences of our

actions. If we do something that brings a pleasant result then we are

more likely to repeat that action. This is reinforcement. There are

two kinds of reinforcement – positive and negative.

Positive reinforcement is when something we don’t like occurs and we

are comforted. E.g. a parent comforts a frightened child. If the

level of comfort begins to drop then the child will make more fuss to

get the comfort. The parent reinforces the behaviour by offering the

comfort/attention demanded by the child.

Negative reinforcement is when something we don’t like is avo...

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...ue in everyday life?

The positive and negative reinforcement from the operant conditioning

have similarities to SLT and I believe that, in particular, the

operant conditioning is common sense. If we don’t like the

consequences of a certain action, then of course we would not wish to

repeat the action; if the consequences are good, then we would want to

repeat it.

I believe in some circumstances that the psychoanalytic theory could

be the answer, but I also think some things could well be a born

wariness. This may be more relevant in countries where extremely

dangerous or poisonous animals are prevalent.

With this in mind I believe that all the explanations given could have

a bearing on, or be the cause of, phobias. In some cases perhaps even

a combination of theories may be the root cause of phobias.