Psychopathology - Phobia's

Which of the following are behavioural characteristics of a phobia?

• Panic

• Avoidance

• Anxiety

• Irrational beliefs

Which of the following are emotional characteristics of a phobia?

• Avoidance

• Endurance

• Irrational beliefs

• Anxiety

An example of a specific phobia is a phobia of...

• Spiders

• Social situations

• Open spaces

• Balloons

The neutral stimulus in a phobia of snakes would be...

• a bite

• panic

• fear

• a snake

Classical conditioning suggests that phobias are...

• acquired

• maintained

• learnt

• associated

Operant conditioning suggests phobias are maintained through...

• positive reinforcement

• positive punishment

• negative reinforcement

• negative punishment

Reorder the following...

• A bite causes the response of fear

• the spider triggers the response of fear

• this pairing happens several times

• A bite + a spider produces a fear response

Systematic desensitisation treats phobias through...

• Exposing the person to their feared stimulus immediately

• Providing coping mechanisms such as muscle relaxation

• creating a anxiety hierarchy

• changing an irrational thought to a more rational one

In ​ (a)   a patient learns to replace the feeling of being afraid with the feeling of being relaxed, this is known as ​ (b)  

• flooding
• reciprocal inhibition
• systematic desensitisation
• CBT
• counter-conditioning

One weakness of flooding is...

• It is highly unethical because it breaks the guideline of protection from harm

• It can make the phobia worse if you don't go through with it

• It is very time consuming and therefore has negative economic implications

• It doesn't account for operant conditioning only classical conditioning