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Issues in Mental Health

Behaviourist and cognitive explanations of mental illness

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 03

Overview

Recall questions on the behaviourist explanation of mental illness including classical and operant conditioning, Little Albert, Mowrer's two-process model and social learning, and the cognitive explanation including Ellis's ABC model, irrational beliefs, Beck's negative triad, schemas and cognitive biases.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Evaluation

Give one strength and one weakness of the behaviourist explanation.

Key term

How could a phobia be acquired through classical conditioning?

Key term

How does social learning extend the behaviourist account?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    State the central assumption of the behaviourist explanation of mental illness.

    Model answer

    Abnormal behaviour is learned from the environment in exactly the same way as normal behaviour, so it is maladaptive learning rather than illness.

  2. 2

    How could a phobia be acquired through classical conditioning?

    Model answer

    A neutral object present at the moment of a frightening event becomes associated with that event, so the object alone comes to trigger the fear response.

  3. 3

    Which study is used to show that a fear response can be conditioned in a child?

    Model answer

    Watson and Rayner's work with Little Albert, in which pairing a white rat with a sudden loud noise led the infant to fear the rat and other furry objects.

  4. 4

    How does operant conditioning explain why a phobia persists?

    Model answer

    Avoiding the feared object removes the anxiety, and that relief negatively reinforces the avoidance, so the fear is never put to the test and never disconfirmed.

  5. 5

    What does Mowrer's two-process model claim?

    Model answer

    It claims that phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and then maintained through operant conditioning by the reinforcing effect of avoidance.

  6. 6

    How does social learning extend the behaviourist account?

    Model answer

    Disordered behaviour can also be acquired by watching and imitating a model, particularly where the model is seen to be rewarded or is someone the person identifies with.

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APunishment requires deprivation, loss of autonomy and stigma.
BReform requires trust, responsibility and self-respect.
CThe regime that achieves one tends to undermine the other.

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