Outline the clinical characteristics of one anxiety disorder

(10 Marks)

Anxiety is an adaptive response, an individual with an anxiety disorder experiences anxiety that is disproportionate to threats that are presented. Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorders. Phobias are an extreme irrational fear of certain situations, objects, people or activities; the level of fear is so great the object or situation is avoided whenever possible. Phobias are classified into three categories, specific phobia, social phobia and agoraphobia. Agoraphobia and social phobia usually interfere with the individuals’ daily life, whereas specific phobia generally has less impact.

Specific phobias are a fear of specific objects such as animals, the environment, a situation or blood and guts. The prevalence is 4-7% of the population. Specific phobias can be caused from direct experience, observation or from being told to fear the object. The clinical characteristic for this is for the individual with the phobia to avoid the feared object. The anxiety from the situation often results in restlessness, jumpy behaviour; in general the individual finds it difficult to relax and may experience a startled response when presented with the feared stimuli.

Social phobias are due to the individual’s self-consciousness of their behaviour and a fear of being negatively judged by others in social situations. Social phobia can be related to shyness. The anxiety reduces the phobic’s ability to cope with the social surroundings and interferes with the individuals’ ability to function in at least some areas of daily life. Approximately 1-2% prevalence of the population meets the criteria of social phobia. The phobia can be triggered by actual or perceived judgement from others.

Agoraphobia is a fear of leaving a familiar area, which can be open or closed. It is the only phobia that is treated as a medical condition. The prevalence of the population is 2-3%. The phobia is co-morbid with panic disorder. It is estimated that 50% of all phobics suffer their phobia with panic disorder. The individual suffering from the phobias may also feel frightened and distressed by the anxiety and lose control of their bodily functions as well as reduce their cognitive functioning, resulting in an inability to function adequately in their social environment. They may also experience the physical symptoms such as sweating, blushing, stammering etc. The cognitive and behavioural symptoms appear to change the thinking and physical reaction of the individual to the anxious situation, and the emotional symptoms of the individual feeling a loss of control of their bodily functions.

The DSM-IV criteria for the diagnosis of a phobia is the individual must have a persistent fear of a specific object or situation. The exposure to the fear produces rapid anxiety response. The individual recognises the fear is extreme and irrational. The phobic stimuli is avoided or responded to with great anxiety. The phobics’ reaction interferes with the individuals’ social life that they are unable to function adequately and, are distressed with the phobia.

Discuss psychological explanations of one anxiety disorder

(20 Marks)

There are three psychological explanations of phobias these are behavioural, cognitive and social. The ...

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Discuss psychological explanations of one anxiety disorder

(20 Marks)

There are three psychological explanations of phobias these are behavioural, cognitive and social. The behavioural explanation of phobias seeks to explain phobias as a result of classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning theory. Through classical conditioning a neutral or conditioned stimulus can come to produce fear, if on several occasions it is presented at the same time as an unconditioned stimulus. Watson and Rayner’s experiment on Albert the 11-month-old boy shows that phobias can be conditioned into an individual this way. Watson and Rayner generated the fear of a white rat by associating it with a loud noise. The white rat was the neutral stimuli and the loud noise was the unconditioned stimuli. They presented the white rat repeatedly with the loud noise; Albert feared the loud noise and learnt to fear the white rat by associating his fear with the white rat. The fear was now Albert’s conditioned response and the white rat was the conditioned stimulus.

Loud Noise Fear

Unconditioned stimuli Unconditioned response

Loud Noise + White Rat Fear

Unconditioned stimulus Neutral Stimulus Unconditioned response

White Rat Fear

Conditioned Stimulus Conditioned Response

This experiment showed that Albert developed a fear of a white rat through associating a neutral stimulus with a fear provoking stimulus. However some individuals may have inherited a high level of physiological reactivity. The extent to which the individual is classically conditioned to a neutral stimulus could be determined by this physiological reactivity. In addition, animal phobia is more likely to become classically conditioned because there is preparedness for survival from the EEA, other stimuli may not become classically conditioned. Davison found phobias of neutral stimuli cannot be easily conditioned as Albert’s experiment suggested; he tried to condition phobias of neutral stimuli in a laboratory but had little success. However being in an experimental setting may have prevented the participants from behaving naturally; therefore the fear was not conditioned. The behaviourist concept of stimulus generalising suggest that a fear response to one thing can be generalised to other things, and as predicted by the behavioural concept Albert generalised the phobia of white rats to other furry white objects such as cotton wool, fur and white beards. However his reactivity may predispose him to the anxious disorder. Due to Albert being a child he may have developed his fear of the rat because he was immediately able to recognise the appearance of the animal is least like a human, he feared other objects that were similar to the rat because he developed a cognitive bias unconsciously. Also the research evidence on phobias being a result of traumatic experiences lacks reliability, as shown by Davison it is difficult to replicate Watson and Rayners experiment; although it was found 50% of people suffering from certain phobias recalled a traumatic experience that had triggered their phobia, therefore supporting classical conditioning. The other 50% of phobics that cannot recall an unpleasant experience initiating their phobia could be due to repression of the expression.

The development of phobias can also be explained by Mowrer’s two-process theory, this involves operant conditioning. The first stage of the process involves classical conditioning, for example linking the white rat and the loud noise. The second stage of the theory involves operant conditioning as avoidance of the phobic stimulus reduces the fear response and is thus reinforcing, therefore the fear is maintained and a phobia is developed. Behavioural explanations are reductionist; they oversimplify concepts to one specific thing and ignore other factors. The explanation is also deterministic because it suggests behaviour is controlled by the environment and ignores the individuals own ability to control their behaviour.

Social learning theory explains fear as not being intentional, the learning of the fear happens at an unconscious cognitive level. Evidence of modelling was found in monkeys that observed other monkeys displaying a fearful reaction to a snake; these monkeys developed a phobia of snakes because it is a harmful stimulus. Bandura proposed phobias can be learnt through observational learning, modelling and direct reinforcement. There are other psychological explanations of anxious disorders.

The cognitive explanation suggests faulty thinking is the cause of phobias. Beck and Emery conceded that anxious people avail cognitive biases, which causes them exaggerate the threats posed by stimuli. This has face validity because phobics have reported high level of anxiety and it is plausible that phobics find their environment a threatening place. Clark’s cognitive theory of panic disorder suggests individuals suffering from panic disorder tend to interpret their bodily functions over sensitively i.e. they react to their bodily functions in a life-threatening way. This makes them more anxious and increases their catastrophic thoughts. However it cannot be identified if cognitive biases are the cause of phobias or if the phobias are the cause of the individuals’ cognitive biases. Also the over consciousness of bodily response could be due to physiological reactivity of the individual and it maybe the underlying cause of the fear. The explanation is description rather than explanatory; it describes the thought patterns of the individual but does not explain why the individual is having these thought patterns.

The social explanation is another psychological explanation of anxiety disorders. According to this explanation parental rearing styles have an impact on the development of phobias. It has been found that parental styles that are high in control and overprotection and low in affection are linked to social phobia and agoraphobia. However accounts of parental styles are retrospective. Another limitation is all that has been obtained is correlations between rearing styles and anxiety disorders, correlations do not prove causality. There is evidence that phobics experience more serious life events before the onset of the anxiety disorder, in Kleiner and Marshall’s study, 84% of agoraphobics reported to have experienced family problems prior to their first panic attack. Finlay and Brown found a difference between anxious and depressed patients in terms of life events they had experienced in the 12 months prior to the onset of their disorder. Both groups had experienced an above average number of life events, but anxious patients tended to have experienced danger events, whereas depressed patients experienced loss events. However life events may be a factor of variables that developed the disorders.

In conclusion the behavioural explanation claims phobias are developed as a result of classical and operant conditioning, this is called the two-process theory. The experiment with Albert demonstrated classical conditioning. However, research indicates that phobias do not depend on having previously encountered a frightening situation, and individuals that have experienced frightening encounters do not necessarily develop a phobia. Social learning theory is a behavioural explanation that may apply to some specific phobias. The cognitive explanation suggests that the individual suffering from the phobia have cognitive biases which cause the individual to exaggerate the threat posed by the stimuli. Some individuals may react to their bodily responses in a catastrophic way more than other individuals because they have a higher physiological reactivity. The social explanation can be used to explain the development of phobias through parental rearing styles and life events. The main problem with obtaining information about parental rearing styles may be the individual perceives the style differently from how it actually was. The main problem with obtaining information on life events is that it was in the past the so remembering them may be distorted and some events may have been forgotten. All three accounts of psychological explanations can be used to describe the development of phobias; however there are other explanations of anxiety disorders that are not psychological such as the evolutionary explanation. According to preparedness argument phobias are adaptive because they are a fear of things that would have been a threat to humans in the EEA. The evolutionary explanation is a counter perspective of the conditioning explanation and may explain why replications of Watson and Rayner’s experiment failed to condition phobias to neutral stimuli.

Peer Reviews

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

sydneyhopcroft

25th of Aug 2012

Quality of writing

The Quality of Written Communication is excellent. The candidate has clearly taken the time to read and re-read their work to ensure maximum clarity of written expression. There is good evidence of the candidate using psychological terminology appropriately and accurately, which indicates to the examiner a great level of knowledge and confidence in their analysis of psychology. There is no cause for concern with regard to grammar, spelling or punctuation.

Level of analysis

The Level of Analysis is very good and very extensive. There is a balanced discussion given to each theory and this shows the examiner the candidate is able to demonstrate evaluative abilities that maintain balance and order. My only gripe with the analysis is that it feels as if it is carried into the conclusion. The conclusions of questions like these really aren't worth many marks other than for structure, as there is an enormous amount of analytical content required elsewhere in the essay and not much time is left to form such an extensive conclusion as is shown here. As a result, it is recommended that the conclusion merely re-iterate the introduction, which must be equally as brief so as to maximise analysis marks (12/20 marks are attributed to AO2 - critical evaluation - in Q2). So it is best to keep the analysis in the middle of the essay and have only a very brief conclusion; conclusions by nature should not feature analysis anyway.

Response to question

The content written here is extensive, but doesn't appear to reflect the amount that many candidates would be able to write under proper exam conditions with the allotted 30 minutes given for questions of this nature, so whilst what is written is predominantly accurate, it is hard to gauge the candidate's exam abilities. There is an excellent understanding of the nature of anxiety disorders, and the first question sees a relatively straight-forward and precise answer which nicely covers the three main phobias with excellent detail and description. I like the references to the DSM-IV as the symptoms being described have to be sourced by either this book or another trusted source published bu the World Health Organisation, and so this is a plus to see. With regard to the answer to the second question, candidates are required to briefly discuss the theories behind anxiety disorders and then discuss the strengths and weaknesses with this theory. The candidate masterfully completes this task, though perhaps in too much detail that would mean the candidate would not finish in the time normally allotted. And as such some of the detail in the description of the theories and beliefs about anxiety disorders is unnecessary. Only comment on the bare necessities to convey the differences between the behavioural, social and cognitive theories and then discuss the strengths and limitations of said theories, citing the appropriate empirical evidence to support your claims. Without this empirical evidence, you are not contextualising the evaluation and this can lead to losing easy marks.

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