Phobia and Addiction Paper

Phobia And Addiction Paper

March 12, 2012

PSY/300

Phobia and addictions are two emotional difficulties and learning theories can account for. A phobia is a continual irrational fear of an object, activity, or a situation that a person cannot seem to shake nor avoid. Phobias can interfere with someone’s ability to socialize, work, and maintain a normal daily life style. Also people with phobia condition may also isolate themselves from society. It may also caused such an overwhelming anxiety that often caused them to avoid any situation or object that is associated with the phobia. When going through phobia, some of the symptoms can be, shortness of breath, chest pain, sweating, dizziness, nausea, and fear of dying.

A phobia can be developed in classical conditioning when you produce a fear tactic with it. For example, at a young age you may not have been afraid of an object or a thing such as a dog, or anything else they put in front of you. But when someone hit a pole behind you to make you scared over and over, you then associated that scary sound with an object in front of you. Then it becomes some form of a phobia. Nevertheless I do not think people are born with a phobia condition, a certain something such as having some sort of a negative contact or reaction from something had to happen for it to develop. Things like a car accidents, robberies, and daily news may trigger a feeling of phobia.

I cannot imagine what these individuals are going through. Living in fear is a scary feeling, sometime I wonder what if one day it happen to me, then again we are all probably have experienced or endured some form of phobia. Whether it is as simple as being afraid of heights compare to fear of any types of sounds. For example when watching the daily news report, I often felt that I am actually there or the person who was in danger. It takes me a long time to tell myself that everything is fine and that it wasn’t me. I have tried my best to stay away from the daily news.

Classical and operant conditioning are two types of associative learning developed out of the behaviorist perspective. Although they share familiar features such as prepared learning, extinction, generalization, discrimination, and the possibility of maladaptive associations, both entail learning associations, and neither will last if not reinforced. Each and every one of us is conditioned in several way or another, either classically or operant, without even being aware of