Section D Revision

List of Experiments. Pavlov Classical conditioning

Watson and Rayner (1920) Little Albert.

SLT

Coombes (1980) Two Rats

Mineka et al (1984) Monkeys

Curio (1988) Blackbird warning call – Teacher bird

Leib et al (2000) Children more likely to have a phobia if parents do.

Seligman (1971) Preparedness

Slater and Shield (1969) Identical twins more likely to have similar phobias

Jones (1924) Curing a boy of his Phobia (deconditioned)

Bennett-Levy and Marteau (1984) More afraid of ugly, slimy, speedy or sudden movement

1) Classical conditioning and phobias

Classical conditioning A learning process which builds up an association between the two stimuli

through repeated pairings.

Association The link between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus that make

the neutral stimulus cause the same response.

Generalisation When a conditioned response is produced to stimuli that are similar to the

conditioned stimulus.

Phobia An intense fear that prevents ‘normal living’ in some way.

Extinction The loss of a classically conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is

repeated many times without the unconditioned stimulus.

Classical Conditioning and Phobias

With regard to phobias if a real fear is triggered by something when a harmless stimulus is present, an

association may be made between the two things. This can cause a phobia.

E.g. a little girl is playing on the beach in shallow water. She catches her flip-flop on a stone, trips, and

hurts herself. Her dad picks her up but she is wet and frightened.

When the girl gets home she is afraid of taking a bath because she has generalized her fear of the sea

to a fear of all water.

Task 1: Complete the following flow chart

Before conditioning

NS (water) → ________________ UCS (_______________) →UCR _______________

During conditioning:

NS (water) + UCS _______________ → (UC_______________) _______________

After conditioning:

(_______________) → (CR) _______________

Watson and Raynor (1920) Watson and Raynor (1920) conditioned Little Albert to be phobic of a white rat. Each time a white rat was shown to Albert, a loud noise was made with a steal bar behind him. The noise frightened him and he associated his fear with the rat.

Albert’s fear generalised to other white, fluffy things such as cotton wool and a Father Christmas mask.

Conditioned responses often take many trials to learn but if the conditioned stimulus is repeated many times without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response is lost. This is called extinction.

However, extinction doesn’t happen very easily. Once a phobia has been learned, it is very hard to lose. e.g. if a child gets bitten by a dog, they might become afraid of dogs. Even though dogs don’t often bite and the child is never bitten again, it may be hard to overcome the fear.

Phobias are generally learned from one event – this is called ‘one-trial learning’. e.g. a person may be afraid of driving after having one bad car accident.

2) Social learning theory and phobias

Key terminology:

Vicarious reinforcement Learning through the positive consequences of other people’s actions rather

than first-hand – we are more likely to copy if they are rewarded.

Modelling Imitating the behaviour of someone.

SLT involves gaining new behaviours by watching n imitating a role model – same-sex role models are

more likely to be imitated.

If the role model is rewarded then the observer is more likely to imitate them –

vicarious reinforcement.

o ATTENTION (IDENTIFICATION)

o MEMORY

o REPRODUCTION

o MOTIVATION = VICARIOUS REINFORCEMENT

Coombes et al 1980 Animals also learn from observing each other – e.g. Coombes et al 1980 let

two rats drink from a spout. One rat had been given an injection to make it sick so later both rats

avoided drinking from the spout. The rat which hadn’t been sick had learned not to drink from the

spout because it had seen the other rat being sick. Learning to avoid something unpleasant is similar

to learning a fear.

Social learning applies

Mineka et al (1984) found that their laboratory monkeys that had grown up in the wild were afraid of snakes. The ones born in captivity were not afraid. The lab-born monkeys learned to be afraid of snakes through watching the wild-born monkeys being afraid of snakes. This shows that the fear of snakes can be through social learning.

When blackbirds see a predator they give a warning call. Curio (1988) showed that social learning could explain how blackbirds could learn to give predator alarms to a non-predator.

3) Phobias and preparedness

Key terminology:

Preparedness The tendency to learn some associations more easily, quickly and permanently than others.

Seligman (1971) Suggested we learn links more between some things more easily than others.

E.g. more likely to fear deep water than long grass as evolution seems to have prepared us to learn about things that are threatening.

A prepoared stimulus is something that is threatening to humans in their early evolution.

According to the theory of evolution, if two animals were living in a forest and encountered a forest fire, the one who ran away would be more likely to survive. This shows some behaviours are adaptive and being fearful can be useful.

In this example, fear makes sense because fires are deadly. Sometimes we have irrational fears of objects or situations that are not dangerous.

We learn links between some things more easily than others, as evolution has ‘prepared’ us to learn about things that are threatening.

Many phobias are not random – people are afraid of thunder because being struck by lightning was a

real risk for early humans.

This explains why some phobias are more common than others. e.g. we are more likely to be scared of

snakes (could have been a predator) than clothes.

One-trial learning – learning to be afraid of something dangerous immediately will keep you alive.

Nature V NurtureEvidence for the nature argument Evidence for the nurture argument

Preparedness – there is a genetic influence on thekinds of things we learn to fear. Bennett-Levy andMarteau showed that more people are afraid ofanimals with certain characteristics.

Mineka et al (1984) found that monkeys learn fearsthrough social learning. As monkeys and people arevery similar, it is likely that we can learn fears too.

Slater and Shield (1969) found that identical twinswere more similar in their phobias than nonidenticaltwins.

Watson and Raynor (1920) used classicalconditioning to make Little Albert frightened of awhite rat. This shows the environment can producephobias.

Bennett-Levy and Marteau (1984) Aim:

To see whether we are more afraid of, or avoid, animals that:

Move quickly

Move suddenly

Look very different from people

Procedure:

Questionnaire 1 asked about fear of animals and how close the person would get to them:

Fear scale: 1-3 (1= not afraid, 3= very afraid)

Nearness scale: 1-5 (1= enjoy picking it up, 5= move further away than 2 metres)

Questionnaire 2 measured how the participants felt about each animal. They rated each species on a three-point scale (1= not, 2= quite, 3= very) for:

Ugliness Sliminess How speedy they were How suddenly they moved

Findings: (from most – least feared):

1. Rat 16. Squirrel

2. Cockroach 17. Caterpillar

3. Jellyfish 18. Baby Seal

4. Spider 19. Blackbird

5. Slug 20. Hamster

6. Grass snake 21. Baby chimpanzee

7. Beetle 22. Butterfly

8. Lizard 23. Spaniel

9. Worm 24. Tortoise

10. Frog 25. Robin

11. Moth 26. Lamb

12. Ant 27. Cat

13. Crow 28. Ladybird

14. Mouse 29. Rabbit

15. grasshopper