OCR Psychology A Level Book 2 sample

check your understanding 1. Outline how operant conditioning can explain depression. 2. Outline one study that supports operant conditioning as an explanation of depression. 3. How can classical conditioning explain the initiation of a phobia? 4. How can operant conditioning explain the maintenance of a phobia? 5. How can social learning theory explain the initiation of a phobia? 6. Summarise one piece of research evidence that supports behaviourist explanations of mental illness. Be brave! If you see an insect, spider or snake, keep calm and those around you will stay calm too—according to social learning theory they will imitate your calm behaviour rather than learning fear behaviour. The case of Little Albert When Albert was 11 months old, the study began. A white rat was placed in front of Albert, and he showed no fear towards it, i.e. it was a ‘neutral’ stimulus (NS). When he reached out to touch the rat, the researchers banged a steel bar behind his head. Albert jumped, fell forward, and when the researchers repeated the process he began to cry and bury his head in the mattress he was sitting on. After several of these pairings of rat and loud noise, seeing the rat, even without the steel bar being struck, caused Albert to cry. Watson and Rayner concluded that they had conditioned Albert to fear the rat. This suggests that it is possible to condition someone to have a phobia. Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)  Unconditioned response (UCR) Banging bar Cry, fall forward Neutral stimulus (NS) + Paired with UCS White rat Banging bar Conditioned stimulus (CS)  Conditioned response (CR) White rat Cry, fall forward The behaviourist explanation of specific phobias Behaviourist theories can explain many different mental illnesses, but probably best fit as an explanation of phobias . Orval Hobart Mowrer (1947) proposed the two-process model to explain how phobias are learned. The first stage explains that the phobia is initiated through a process of classical conditioning and the second stage is where phobias are maintained through a process of operant conditioning. Classical conditioning – initiation One of the classic studies in psychology is the case of Little Albert, described on the right. The researchers John Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920) conditioned a small baby (Albert) to develop a fear of white furry objects through association with a loud noise. The same steps can be used to explain how a phobia develops. For example, phobias of dogs can be initiated from a child being bitten by a dog. The original UCS and UCR are the painful stimulus of being bitten and the fear reaction. The dog is an NS which is now paired with pain. The dog then becomes a CS producing the CR of fear. Operant conditioning – maintenance of a phobia Although classical conditioning can explain how a phobia can be acquired, it cannot explain why individuals continue to feel fearful. It also cannot explain why individuals avoid the feared object. Both can, however, be explained by operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement can explain why a person continues to feel fearful—when an individual experiences the phobic object and has an emotional reaction, they often receive attention, sympathy or special treatment. This extra attention can act as a reinforcer of the behaviour and so they continue to show the phobic reactions as they are being rewarded for their behaviour. Negative reinforcement (escape from something unpleasant) explains why an individual avoids the phobic object, such as a dog—by avoiding the object the individual reduces their fear. This therefore reinforces the continued avoidance of the object because it reduces the unpleasant feeling. Social learning theory Social learning theory is not part of the two-process model but it is a ‘neo’ behaviourist explanation, as mentioned on the facing page. Phobias may be acquired through observing and imitating the behaviour of others. For example, a child may see their parent responding to a spider by screaming and jumping around. The child may then ‘model’ this behaviour, i.e. imitate it especially because the behaviour was performed by someone they identify with. Research evidence for social learning Chris Askew and Andy Field (2007) found that social learning can explain the acquisition of phobias. In their study, 47 children aged 7 to 9 years old were shown images of three unfamiliar animals, paired with either a scared or happy adult face. The results showed that when presented with an image of the same animals at a later date, children rated their own feelings of calm or fear in a way that suggested they had imitated the original ‘reaction’ of the adult face. In a follow-up study, a new group of 31 children were shown the same pairings as in the first study but this time were given the opportunity to approach a box that they were told contained one of the three animals from the initial images. Children took longer to approach the box that they were told contained the animals whose images had been paired with fear faces. Both studies suggest that phobias can be learned vicariously through social learning—the children imitated the fear reaction displayed by the adults. 35 Background: The behaviourist explanation of mental illness