Some Practical Applications

In a widely cited study reported in 1920, American researchers John B. Watson
and Rosalie Rayner conditioned a phobic reaction in an eleven-monthold
infant named Albert. The researchers discovered that Albert feared
loud noises but seemed unafraid of a number of other things, including
small animals.

Watson and Rayner subsequently placed a white rat in Albert’s crib.
When Albert reached for it, the researchers struck a piece of resonate metal
with a hammer, making a “loud sound.” After a few such presentations, presenting the rat alone elicited crying and various avoidance reactions. Albert
also showed signs of fear to similar things, such as a rabbit, a furry object,
and fluffy clumps of cotton (stimulus generalization). Thus, Watson and
Rayner provided early experimental evidence that Pavlovian principles are
involved in the acquisition of human emotional reactions.
While this study induced a phobic reaction in the subject, systematic desensitization
is a procedure designed to eliminate phobias and anxieties.

The procedure was largely developed and named by South African-born
therapist Joseph Wolpe. Noting that it is very difficult to have pleasant and
anxious feelings simultaneously, Wolpe fashioned a systematic technique to
teach clients to engage in behavior (relaxation) that competes with anxiety.
Therapy typically begins with an interview designed to identify specific
sources of the client’s fears. The therapist helps the client assemble a list of
items that elicit fear. Items associated with the least amount of fear are positioned
at the bottom of the list; most feared items are placed near the top.
For example, if a client has a strong fear of dogs, the therapist and client
would develop a list of scenes that make the client fearful. Situations may
vary from hearing the word “dog” to seeing pictures of dogs, being in the vicinity
of a dog, hearing a dog bark, being close to dogs, and patting a dog.
The client is next taught to relax by tensing and releasing various groups
of muscles—shoulders, face, arms, neck, and so on. This phase of treatment
ends when the client has learned to relax fully on his or her own in a matter
of minutes.

The client and therapist now move on to the next phase of therapy. While
remaining fully relaxed, the client is asked to imagine being in the first situation
at the bottom of the list. The image is held for several seconds. The client
then relaxes for about twenty seconds before imagining the same situation
again for several seconds. When the client is able to imagine an item and remain
fully relaxed, the therapist presents a slightly more fearful situation to
imagine. This procedure continues until an image causes distress, at which
time the session ends. The next session begins with relaxation, followed by
the client slowly moving up the list. As before, the client stops at the point of
distress. Therapy is successful when the client can imagine all the items on
the list while remaining fully relaxed. The technique is less helpful when clients
have difficulty identifying fearful situations or calling up vivid images.
In the hands of a skillful therapist, systematic desensitization is an effective
technique for reducing a wide variety of fears. Its Pavlovian features involve
pairing imagined fearful scenes with relaxation. When relaxation successfully
competes with fear, it becomes a new CR to the imagined scenes. As
relaxation becomes sufficiently strong as a CR, anxiety is replaced by calmness
in the face of earlier aversive stimuli.

Extinction offers a more direct route to the reduction of fear than systematic
desensitization. The technique called flooding makes use of extinction.
Flooding exposes the client to fear-arousing stimuli for a prolonged period
of time. Suppose a child is afraid of snakes. Although likely to increase the
fear initially, flooding would require the child to confront the snake directly
and continuously—to be “flooded” by various stimuli associated with the
snake—until the conditioned stimuli lose their power to elicit fear. Some
therapists think that the application of this technique is best left to professionals. 594