PSY

Running head: DOG PHOBIA 1
Dog Phobia
Student’s Name
University
Subject
Date
DOG PHOBIA 2
Dog Phobia
Introduction
Phobias are experienced by people in their lifetime. Phobia is nothing but an unreasonable
and overwhelming fear of something which rarely presents a danger. The anxiety caused by
phobia can be different for different people. In some cases it can be mild and the person can
just withdraw from situation while in others it may cause serious psychological problems.
There are so many reasons why we experience phobias; operant conditioning, observational
conditioning and classical conditioning are just to name a few. The environment of a human
being controls his or her behavior in some ways. We go through some experiences in our
lifetime and it certainly affects the way we perceive and process the information. These
experiences tend to shape our understanding on some situations and shape us the way we are
today.
If a dog bites a person, it is more likely that the person will always try to stay away
from the dog even when the person was so close to the dog and had no issues with them. The
person will always take measure not to come into contact of the dogs. After such accidents,
the affection towards the dogs will suddenly go away and the feeling of fear will creep in. In
most of the cases, such persons become very anxious when going into a new area and finding
new dogs even if the accident took place long ago. People may wonder how someone can still
be in trouble with dogs while the even happened very long time back. We can explain it in a
number of ways. This can either be related to Skinner’s operant conditioning or Pavlov’s
classical conditioning.
Sally’s Dog Phobia
Sally, a 23 year old woman has developed a sever phobia of dogs and dogs scare her more
than anyone else. She developed dog phobia ever since she was in 2
nd
grade and she had
DOG PHOBIA 3
some negative experiences with dogs. Now, she avoids dogs in every way possible. She
avoids the places or streets where possibility of dogs is. She starts feeling anxious once she
meets a new person or somebody invites her to an unfamiliar area.
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning is nothing but a form of the learning in
which conditioned stimulus (CS), tends to signal occurrence of a 2
nd
stimulus, unconditioned
stimulus (US). A stimulus is nothing but a factor that tends to cause a response in organism.
Conditioned response or CR is a learned response that is result of the previously neutral
stimulus. US is normally a biologically significant stimulus like pain or food that tends to
elicit response from the beginning; it is termed as unconditioned response or UR. At first, CS
normally produces no specific response, but after the conditioning process it tends to elicit...