Classical conditioning in the development and treatment of phobias

Classical Conditioning and Phobia Treatment

Fear is a natural, human emotion. Psychologists have long believed that fear of the unknown protected our ancestors from engaging in reckless and life-threatening behavior. Ancient humans who had a healthy sense of fear in the unknown avoided taking unnecessary risks. They were therefore survivors, who were able to pass their genes to their progeny.

However, today, many humans continue to experience fear, even when the emotion is clearly not warranted.

Such irrational fears can elicit strong emotional and physical symptoms from people. When these intense and irrational fears cause unwarranted anxiety and interfere with his or her ability to enjoy life, a person is said to be suffering from phobia.

This paper examines phobia from the perspective of classical conditioning. The first part of this paper looks at the roots of classical conditioning and explains how people learn through this process. The next part of this paper then looks at the role classical conditioning plays in how people develop their fears and phobias.

In the conclusion, this paper examines the effectiveness of various phobia therapies.

Particular emphasis on techniques such as flooding, counter-conditioning and other therapies that employ classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning

Ivan Pavlov is perhaps the most famous psychologist associated with the term classical conditioning. In his famous experiment, the Russian psychologist showed how dogs could be conditioned to respond to a neutral stimulus in the same way that they respond to a non-neutral stimulus (Rescorla 2001). The trick is to associate these stimuli together to produce the desired response. Thus, Pavlov knew that dogs would naturally salivate when exposed to food, a non-neutral stimulus. By ringing a bell every time a dog was fed, Pavlov proved that the previously non-neutral stimulus of the bell could be, in the dog's mind, associated with food. Therefore, the dog would drool merely at the sound of the bell.

This learning process is also applicable to humans. A child, for example, would feel an instinctive need to mimic her mother's response. Seeing her mother happy would be an unconditioned stimulus, resulting in the unconditioned response of happiness on the part of the daughter. If a stranger showed up for a visit, the child's response would therefore be conditioned by her mother's reaction. The child would be more likely to have the conditioned response to an aunt that she had never met before, because her mother's happiness acts as stimuli.

Many factors facilitate or inhibit this learning. First, the conditioning would be more effective if both stimuli - conditioned and unconditioned - were presented at the same time (McCallister and McCallister 1971).

The less time elapsed between the bell ringing and presentation of food, the more likely it will be that the dog associates these two stimuli together. Similarly, an immediate happy reaction from mom would help a child associate the response of happiness to the stimulus of seeing a new aunt.

Also, a person's trust in the conditioning stimuli affects the development of a conditioned response. Parents often loom large in the lives of young children. This therefore places parents in a powerful position to influence their children. Classical conditioning thus helps to explain how children imbibe the values and characteristics of their parents.

Therapies to phobia

Many therapies are currently in use to help people manage their phobia, or to get rid of phobia entirely. Approaches include the use of drugs such as Paxil, Prozac and Celexa work through selectively inhibiting the brain's absorption of the chemical serotonin. As a result is that the individual feels less anxiety and has a greater sense of well-being.

However, experts agree that drug therapies only relieve the symptoms, and are stop-gap solutions at best.

Since phobia can be developed through classical conditioning, many experts reason that the same conditioning techniques would be useful in helping people get over their phobia.

Phobics usually manage their fears by avoiding the objects that make them fearful. However, many psychologists maintain that avoidance merely magnifies the phobia. The task is therefore to expose the person to the feared object, to condition them to respond to the object in an appropriately non-fearful manner. In this manner, a person is forced to deal with his or her phobia.

The task of re-conditioning a response relies on gradually increasing exposure (McCallister et al. 1986). A person with a strong phobia to snakes, for example, can be shown simple line drawings of snakes. Over time, these drawings can then give way to more realistic photos, and even video presentations of crawling serpents. The key is to habituate the person to the presence of the stimulus, in a safe and non-threatening environment. Through habituation, a person could then start to develop a different conditioned response to the pictures of snakes.

Psychologists believe that phobics can become habituated to the object of their fear, just as one becomes habituated to background noises. When progress is made, a person can then be exposed to real snakes. While a healthy fear of poisonous snakes can still be justified, a person can be conditioned to respond without fear or phobia to non-poisonous ones.

Psychologists such as Ost (1989) have found exposure and habituation a very effective technique in helping people manage their phobia. Studies also found that some 80 to 90% of patients who undergo exposure and habituation learn to manage their phobia in the first session. Furthermore, very few patients experience a relapse of their phobic symptoms. Also, contrary to previous concerns with exposure therapy, former phobics who are treated through exposure do not find substitutes for the objects that they formerly feared.

There are many situations that could be difficult to re-create in the psychologist's office, such as agoraphobia. For these, technology and virtual-reality computer simulations provide an important tool for exposure. While not everyone responds to virtual reality, many phobics responded well to computer-simulated exposures (Rothbaum 1995). The point is to "flood" a person with the stimulus that elicits the conditioned response of fear, so a person would be habituated to the point of no longer noticing the stimulus.

Unfortunately, there are times when exposure and habituation are do not work as hoped.

There are other therapies, based on classical conditioning, that are designed to alter one's conditioned response to a feared stimulus. This technique is known as "counter-conditioning," and the objective is to condition a person to have a different response to the phobia-inducing stimulus.

Relaxation is often used as a counter-response. Since relaxation is incompatible with fear, the conditioned response of relaxing "counters" the conditioned phobic response (Weidemann and Kehoe 2003).

In cases where a subject could not even tolerate being in the presence of the phobic stimulus, a technique called "modeling" could also be effective. In this technique, a patient with arachnophobia could observe another person, the "model," encountering a spider and exhibiting the conditioned response of relaxation. Later, phobic patients could engage in "participant modeling," in order to model and develop their own appropriate response to the phobic stimulus (Weidemann and Kehoe 2003).

Biofeedback is another therapy often used in conjunction with all the techniques detailed above. Biofeedback allows trained professionals to monitor a patient's physical response, including pulse, breathing rate and blood pressure (Weidemann and Kehoe 2003).

This helps the therapist ensure that a patient is able to handle exposure to the stimulus. Because phobia elicit strong physical responses, it is therefore important that techniques such as exposure, counter-conditioning and modeling be undertaken with the aid of professional therapists.

In conclusion, while there are different therapy techniques designed to address phobia, their common thread is a recognition of the role played by classical conditioning. The phobic stimuli are not dangerous per se, but the patients have been conditioned to respond with fear. Exposure, habituation, flooding and modeling therefore seek to extinguish or at least alter a conditioned response of fear. Thus, unlike pharmacological means, conditioning-based therapies strive to get at the heart of the phobia, and in the process, provide a patient with relief.