Question

Compare and contrast the conditioning, observational learning, and cognitive theories of the development of phobias.

Answer 1

A phobia is defined as any irrational fear of an object or situations as these do not actually pose a threat to the person. A number of learning theories help to explain the process of development of phobias. They are explained below:

• Classical conditioning: It explains behavior as being caused by association between different stimuli. According to the classical conditioning theory, phobias are result of a neutral stimulus becoming paired with an unconditioned stimulus and which will eventually produce a conditioned response on its own.
• Operant conditioning: It explains behaviors a being learned through rewards and punishments. One may experience anxiety when you are in large groups of people(social phobia), you may escape the situation in order to reduce your anxiety. Future avoidance of large social groups will result in non-fear response such as feeling relaxed, thus motivating you to avoid similar situations in the future and perpetuating your phobia.
• Social learning theory: It claims that behavior is learned through observation, imitation, vicarious and direct reinforcement through rewards and punishment. According to this theory, phobias can be learned from people around us such as a child watching a parent running in fear away from a wasp (observation), the parent being comforted by another person who calms them down (vicarious reinforcement), then later repeating the observed behaviour (imitation) which is met by a comforting from another person (direct reinforcement).

Learning theories provide best explanation of phobias as it allows us to understand how phobias and fear responses can be influenced by behavior and environment and has helped in the development of therapies for phobias such as flooding therapy and systematic desensitisation.