Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

In Wolpe’s treatment, he used relaxation training, construction of an anxiety hierarchy, and desensitization. For the relaxation training, patients were taught to relax the body in which they could then later relax wherever they desired and be in a deep relaxation state. The construction of an anxiety hierarchy involves the therapist and the patient to list possible anxiety causing situations. The list goes from situations that would cause a bit of anxiety to higher fearing situations a patient may experience. The last step called desensitization, is when the patient “unlearns” their phobia and has to now be in a relaxed state while going through the list of anxiety causing situations. This process is then repeated in several sessions for the patient to decrease their phobia.

Known as a mental disorder a phobia is a persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to compelling desire to avoid it. Phobias tend to affect the way people live their lives, for example, their working and social environments, considering that they last for a very long time and are capable to cause intense psychological physical stress. It is considered today the most common mental and anxiety disorder in the United States (Matig Mavissakalian & David H. Barlow 1981 pp 2). There are many phobias such as: the fear of aging, fear of changing, fear of clowns, fear of getting fat, fear of being in closed spaces, etc.

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory describes the process through which people acquire new info, forms of behavior, or attitudes from others firsthand or vicariously. The likelihood of a behavior presenting itself will rely on the amount of reinforcement it receives and the value that the individual associates to it. While some behavior may be rewarded, others may produce unfavorable responses. An individual will learn from the consequences of these actions and when a similar situation arises, they will alter their behavior according to what was most successful in the past.

The contributions Albert Bandura made to the understanding of social learning have led to further investigation and new findings. Social Cognitive Theory is Bandura’s greatest contribution to social, cognitive, and abnormal psychology. It has led to a greater understanding of human behavior and how humans learn behavior in a social context. Ultimately, modern research found that while Albert Bandura and other social learning theorists uncovered many aspects of learning and perception, there are factors that need further scrutiny, (Martin, Ruble, and Szkrybalo, 2001). The ability to produce more

Introduction: Almost everyone has an irrational fear or two—of mice, for example, or your annual dental checkup. For most people, these fears are minor. But when fears become so severe that they cause tremendous anxiety and interfere with your normal life, they’re called phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything. Most phobias develop in childhood, but they can also develop in adults. If you

Fear, an intensive form of anxiety, can be crippling in nature to some people. It is important that we overcome our fears to be able to grow and mature. There are three main ways in which we can manage or resolve fear: behavioral therapy, systematic desensitization, and exposure desensitization. Behavioral therapy was introduced by John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist, and involved an individual alternating engagements in coping and relaxation techniques to help desensitize that person to the stressors (Seaward, 2015). Systematic desensitization involves the anxious person learning to de-stress from the fear in small, piecemeal increments through which they always feel in control. Exposure desensitization, on the other hand, occurs when the individual is introduced to the real stressor is brief and save encounters with the stressor. Through combinations of the three different ways to

Desensitization is a predominant treatment that exceeds expectations to diminish the fear in a patient of a circumstance, by presenting them to it either in actuality or in one's imagination. In the first place, the patient should consider storms deliberately until the point when the contemplation isn't dreaded. Second, take a look at photographs of the storm until unfeared. Next, watch recordings of the storm until the point that the video is unfeared. Finally, the patient should play sounds from storms noisily for a considerable length of time until the point that the sounds are unfeared. Ensure you never proceed onward to the following stage unless you've effectively finished the past one. By finishing these means one ought to have the capacity

Now they have no choice but confront their fears and when the panic subsides and they find they have come to no harm. The fear (which to a large degree was anticipatory) is extinguished. Prolonged intense exposure eventually creates a new association between the feared object and something positive (e.g. a sense of calm and lack of anxiety). It also prevents reinforcement of phobia through escape or avoidance

However, although Wolpe wasn’t the first to suggest systematic desensitization as the best method to be used when treating anxiety disorders he was the first successfully apply it. With Wolpe believing phobia are learned he believed he could reduce the anxiety by a conditioning procedure. His theory of suppressing the phobias was the fundamental idea of behavioral therapy where you have learned an ineffective behavior or the phobia in this case and must now unlearn it. With this in mind, Wolpe created and used behavioral therapy as his basis and composed a three step process of desensitizing the phobia. First using relaxation training to create a personal state of relaxation Wolpe then moved to the construction of an anxiety hierarchy where he and the patient developed a list of scenes involving the phobia and finally the actual unlearning processes of desensitization was created. Repeating all three steps as one Wolpe averaged out at 12 sessions. As a result, his session results positively favored his method with a 91% success rate accompanying it and supporting his usage of correctly applying systematic desensitization to phobias or anxiety

These therapies are useful for a few reasons. Cognitive behavioral therapy will help him to form coping strategies that will help him to manage his stress and anxiety on his own. It is important to have a tool such as strong coping strategies because they provide long term assistance that can always be useful. This type of therapy is also the better option because it is used to understand the thoughts and feelings that influence the negative behavior that is associated with the disorder. It is helpful for the patient to understand the thoughts and subsequent actions when dealing with this disorder because they are most likely irrational thoughts associated with their phobia. We would use systematic desensitization to help the patient overcome their phobia. It is helpful to not only understand the irrational thoughts associated with the phobias and anxiety, but to confront them head on. Then, try to overcome them and make it less debilitating of a problem. These therapies are better than others for a few reasons. First, it is best to address the thoughts and how they are affecting his actions. Then, learn how to cope with that which is what we are doing with the cognitive behavioral therapy. It is best to first understand, and work through the issues. Then, create strategies rather than focus on what is hidden in the

Pamela Kulbarsh (2014) once wrote in her article titled Phobic Disorders: What Do You Fear? that “to be defined as a phobia, the fear must cause some level of physical or psychological impairment. […] Phobia is a fear gone awry. A phobia twists the normal fear response into something that is difficult, if not, impossible to control.” There are many different types of phobias; however, there are four ways in which a phobia can be categorized. The four different categories that a fear can be classified are as follows: animal, environment, situational, and injection/injury. A phobia involving an animal means a person has an intense fear of any particular animal whether it be a dog or a spider. The next type of phobia is an environmental phobia

Several now classic experiments show the efficacy of systematic desensitization also. Much research on the outcomes of systematic desensitization was done in a way that renders it of little value. Large research on the effects of systematic desensitization disappeared from the literature when exposure technology replaced systematic desensitization as the treatment of choice for phobic complaints. However, the earliest case studies and clinical series suffice to support the claim that systematic desensitization is effective and should be considered when in vivo exposure is not feasible or is initially refused. A case is described in which a 45-year-old female is treated for dental phobia that was based on claustrophobia and on social phobia. Systematic desensitization consists of gradual, imaginal exposure to stimuli organized on a hierarchy constructed using SUDS ratings. Typically, systematic desensitization is combined with some form of relaxation training. The patient is asked to sit back in a comfortable chair and practice a relaxation exercise. Once a state of deep relaxation is attained, the patient is asked to imagine the least upsetting stimulus on the

Exposure therapy is exposing the patient to the phobic stimulus. For example, if one has a phobia of dogs, then the therapist will slowly expose them repeatedly to a dog. This type of therapy is considered the best treatment for specific phobia. There are some other treatments to help, though. Another type of therapy proven to help specific phobia is cognitive behavioral therapy. In this type of therapy, a patient would be exposed to an object, but the main objective is to create a different mind set in the future about the object and new ways to cope when around the phobic stimulus. Along with a type of therapy, a doctor may prescribe medications to be taken with the therapy sessions. These medications are meant to help the body and the mind to relax and stay calm. Medications can also be prescribed to help treat anxiety for situational phobias and to be used when the patient needs it. Many doctors prescribe medications that are either betablockers or sedation drugs (“Specific Phobias”). Betablockers are used to help treat the physical effects of phobias such as keeping the heartbeat steady. Benzodiazepines, such as Ativan, are types of drugs that help reduce anxiety by creating a sedative effect on the patient taking them (“Specific Phobias”). By having regular therapy sessions and taking medications, a person can eliminate a

F. Dudley McGlynn (2010) explored systematic desensitization and results of the study demonstrated that systematic desensitization is a behavior therapy developed by Joseph Wolpe (1915–1997) for fear and anxiety. The therapy begins with an assessment that describes the objects and/or events that elicit fearfulness.

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory is a theory that includes development theories in order to understand how children learn. Bandura’s theory is based on how people can learn by observing others, how internal mental states influence people, and how learning something does not change one’s behavior every time. Bandura was able to find out that people learn by three observational models. The first model is the live model which includes observing how someone demonstrates the behavior, the verbal instruction model which learning occurs through auditory directions, and the symbolic model where modeling occurs through media sources such as internet, movies, and books.