two process model - Mowrer, idea that phobias are acquired by classical conditioning and reinforced by operant conditioning
classical conditioning - learning by association, Watson and Rayner created a phobia in 9 month old Little Albert, phobia of a white rat, the rat was presented to albert at the same time as a loud frightening noise, this made the rat a conditioned stimulus and he got scared as a conditioned response, the conditioning then generalised to other objects such as cotton wool, fur coat etc.
operant conditioning - learning by reinforcement, maintaining the phobia, reinforcement increases the frequency of the behaviour, in this case negative reinforcement is when someone avoids the phobic stimuli, this reduction in fear reinforces the avoidance behaviour so the phobia is maintained
strength - good explanation, proposed in 1960 and went further than Watson and Rayner's concept of classical conditioning, application to therapy
weakness - alternative explanation for avoidance, evidence that avoidance behaviour is motivated by positive feelings of safety, anxiety reduction, ppl w phobias are still able to leave the house. incomplete explanation of phobias, could be caused by evolutionary factors, biological preparedness (acquiring phobias that were a source of danger in our evolutionary past eg. snakes, the dark, adaptive to acquire these fears), shows there's more ways to acquire phobias than just conditioning