Behavioural Explanation for Phobias

Question	Answer
Merckelbach	Some phobias such as blood, small animals ect, can be acquired through modeling, but phobias such as claustrophobia cannot
Classical Conditioning	Pairing of neutral stimulus with an unconditioned response (fear) -Little Albert (white mice) -Bagby (running water) DiGallo - concluded that phobias develop from traumatic events King - phobias in children develop from traumatic events
Observational Learning	Phobia develops from observing another person experiencing pain or upset from an object
Davidson and Neale	Watson and Raynors results were very difficult to replicate. Most lab experiments obtained little or no evidence that individuals can be conditioned to fear neutral stimuli by pairing it with unpleasant stimuli
Barlow and Durand	About 50% of people with phobias involving cars remember a traumatic experience involving cars
Ost	Many people with phobias involving heights, snakes and aeroplanes have never had traumatic experiences involving them (Observational Learning?)
Menzies and Clark	Only 2% of children with phobias involving water reported a frightening experience with water (psychodynamic?)

Resource summary

	Created by Adam O'Rourke almost 11 years ago