Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory: What It Is And How It Explains Phobias
We are all afraid of something. This fear is generally an adaptive emotion as it allows us to adjust our behavior to survive. However, sometimes fears or panic reactions to elements that may not pose a real danger can appear.
When we talk about these fears or the existence of anxiety we often ask ourselves the question: why do they appear? How do they appear? Why are they maintained over time?
Although there are many hypotheses in this regard, one of the best known and especially linked to the answer to the second question is Mowrer’s two-factor theory
Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory is a psychological framework proposed by O. Hobart Mowrer in the mid-20th century to explain the acquisition and maintenance of fear responses and avoidance behaviors. This theory posits that fear is initially acquired through classical conditioning, followed by the reinforcement of avoidance behaviors through operant conditioning. In this article, we delve into the intricacies of Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory, exploring its key concepts, empirical support, and implications for understanding and treating anxiety disorders.
Orval Hobart Mowrer’s two-factor theory is an explanatory model that the author first proposed in 1939 and that proceeds and attempts to offer an explanatory framework regarding Why does a phobic stimulus that causes us fear or anxiety continue to do so over time? even though the association between it and the unconditioned stimulus that caused us to fear has been extinguished.
Thus, this theory is originally based on the behaviorist paradigm and learning theories to try to explain why fears and phobias are acquired and especially why they are maintained, especially when we avoid situations or stimulations that generate anxiety (something that in principle should cause the association between stimulus and discomfort to gradually disappear).
In this sense, the author indicates that phobias and fears appear and remain through a conditioning process that occurs in two phases one in which the initial fear or panic appears and a second in which the behavioral response to it in the form of avoidance generates the fear to be reinforced, by avoiding not the aversive thing but what it has been associated with.
Classical Conditioning and Fear Acquisition
Initial Acquisition of Fear
According to Mowrer’s theory, fear is acquired through classical conditioning, whereby a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a fear-inducing stimulus through repeated pairing. For example, a person may develop a fear of dogs after experiencing a traumatic encounter with a dog. In this scenario, the dog serves as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that elicits fear, while previously neutral stimuli in the environment (such as the sight or sound of a dog) become conditioned stimuli (CS) that trigger fear responses through association with the UCS.
Conditioned Fear Responses
Once the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus for fear, it elicits conditioned fear responses such as increased heart rate, sweating, and avoidance behaviors in the absence of the original fear-inducing stimulus. These responses are learned associations that persist even when the threat is no longer present, highlighting the enduring impact of classical conditioning on fear acquisition.
Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory proposes that avoidance behaviors are reinforced through operant conditioning, whereby individuals learn to avoid situations or stimuli associated with fear in order to reduce anxiety or distress. When individuals engage in avoidance behaviors, they experience a temporary reduction in fear and anxiety, reinforcing the avoidance response and perpetuating the cycle of avoidance.
Negative Reinforcement
Avoidance behaviors are negatively reinforced because they lead to the removal or avoidance of aversive stimuli (i.e., fear and anxiety). By avoiding situations or stimuli associated with fear, individuals experience a reduction in anxiety, which reinforces the avoidance behavior and increases the likelihood of future avoidance in similar situations. Over time, avoidance behaviors become habitual and resistant to extinction, maintaining the cycle of fear and avoidance.
Empirical Support and Clinical Implications
Experimental Studies
Empirical research provides support for Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory through experimental studies demonstrating the acquisition and maintenance of fear responses and avoidance behaviors in laboratory settings. Classical conditioning paradigms, such as fear conditioning experiments using aversive stimuli and neutral cues, have demonstrated the formation of conditioned fear responses. Similarly, operant conditioning studies have shown that avoidance behaviors can be reinforced through negative reinforcement, leading to the perpetuation of anxiety-related behaviors.
Treatment of Anxiety Disorders
Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory has important implications for the treatment of anxiety disorders, particularly those characterized by excessive fear and avoidance behaviors. Behavioral therapies such as exposure therapy and systematic desensitization are based on principles derived from Mowrer’s theory, aiming to extinguish conditioned fear responses and reduce avoidance behaviors through gradual exposure to feared stimuli. By systematically exposing individuals to feared situations or stimuli while preventing avoidance, these therapies help to weaken conditioned fear associations and promote adaptive coping strategies.
Criticisms and Limitations
Oversimplification of Anxiety
Critics of Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory argue that it oversimplifies the complexities of anxiety and avoidance behaviors by focusing solely on classical and operant conditioning processes. Anxiety disorders may involve a myriad of factors, including genetic predispositions, cognitive biases, and socioenvironmental influences, which are not fully accounted for by Mowrer’s framework.
Role of Cognition
Additionally, contemporary models of anxiety emphasize the role of cognitive factors such as beliefs, interpretations, and attentional biases in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. While classical and operant conditioning contribute to the acquisition and reinforcement of fear and avoidance behaviors, cognitive processes may modulate individuals’ perceptions of threat and their responses to anxiety-provoking situations.
The two factors or phases
As we have just mentioned, Mowrer establishes in his bifactor theory that phobias and their maintenance are due to the occurrence of two types of conditioning, which occur one after the other and which allow for an explanation of Why phobias and fears remain and sometimes even increase over time These two phases would be the following.
Classical conditioning
Firstly, the process known as classical conditioning occurs: a stimulus that is initially neutral is associated with a stimulus that per se generates sensations of pain or suffering (unconditioned stimulus), and through this association it ends up acquiring its own characteristics ( going from being neutral to conditioned), with which the same response that would be made in the presence of the original aversive stimulus ends up being emitted (a conditioned response is then given).
As an example, the appearance of a white light (in principle, a neutral stimulus) in a room can be associated with an electric shock (aversive unconditioned stimulus) if they are presented together repeatedly.
This will cause the person, who would initially flee from the shock (unconditioned response) but not from the light, to end up fleeing from the white light when relating it to pain (conditioned response). In fact, technically this could cause a phobia of white light, which would lead us to act fleeing or avoiding its appearance or situations in which it may appear
Instrumental conditioning
In the previous step we have seen how a fear or phobia was formed of an initially neutral stimulus, a white light. But in principle this panic should subside over time if we repeatedly saw that the light is not accompanied by electric shocks. How could we explain that fear lasts for years?
The answer that Mowrer’s two-factor theory offers to this maintenance of phobias and anxieties is that this is due to the appearance of instrumental conditioning, in this case of the response and the negative reinforcement generated by doing it And the fact is that when white light appears we avoid it or directly prevent ourselves from exposing ourselves to situations in which said light may appear, we are avoiding exposing ourselves to the conditioned stimulus.
This may initially seem like an advantage to us, so it reinforces our behavior of avoiding situations in which what we fear may appear. However, fear cannot be extinguished since what we are basically doing is avoiding the conditioned element, what we have related to discomfort, and not the discomfort itself. What is avoided is not the aversive, but the stimulus that warns that it may be close.
In this way, we are not exposed to the phobic stimulus without it being related to the original aversive stimulus, so that we do not lose the association made and the fear and anxiety that it generates in us (in the case of the example, we would learn to avoid the white light, but since we are not exposed to experiencing white light we cannot check if a discharge subsequently appears, which basically causes the fear of light to persist).
Situations and disorders in which it is applied
Mowrer’s two-factor theory proposes an explanatory model that, although it is not exempt from criticism, has often been used as one of the main hypotheses regarding the reason why a fear or anxiety that makes us avoid a stimulus, when associated with some type of aversive stimulation, It does not disappear even though there is no stimulation that causes discomfort or anxiety In this sense, Mowrer’s two-factor theory can explain some well-known disorders, including the following.
1. Phobias
One of the main disorders for which the two-factor theory offers a plausible explanation is the group of phobic disorders. In this sense we can include both specific phobias to a certain stimulus or situation and more general ones such as social phobia or even agoraphobia.
Under this paradigm Phobias would arise first due to the association between the feared stimulus and a sensation or experience of pain discomfort or helplessness to later last over time because at an unconscious level we try to avoid future or possible similar situations.
This means that over time fear not only remains but often even increases, generating anticipation (which in turn generates anguish) despite not facing the situation itself.
2. Panic disorder and other anxiety disorders
Panic disorder is characterized by the recurrent appearance of panic or anxiety attacks, in which a series of symptoms appear such as tachycardia, hyperventilation and feeling of suffocation, sweating, tremors feeling of depersonalization, feeling of having a heart attack, of losing control of one’s body or even of dying.
This highly aversive experience for the sufferer ends up generating anticipatory anxiety, so that the subject suffers from anxiety. faced with the idea of suffering another crisis or you may even change your usual behavior to avoid them.
In this sense, Mowrer’s two-factor theory would also serve as an explanation of why the level of fear or discomfort may not decrease or even increase due to the avoidance that is carried out as a measure to not experience it.
3. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and other obsessive disorders
OCD and other similar disorders can also explain why discomfort persists or even increases over time. In OCD, people who suffer from it experience intrusive and unacceptable thoughts that they experience, which generate great anxiety and that they actively and persistently try to block.
This anxiety causes them great suffering, and they can often end up generating some type of mental or physical ritual that temporarily relieves it (even though the subject themselves may not find meaning or relationship with the obsessive thoughts to their realization).
This means that it is learned through operant conditioning that the compulsion becomes the way to reduce the anxiety caused by obsessions.
However, this temporary relief is harmful, since deep down there is an avoidance of what generates fear, which results in it remaining latent. Thus, every time the thought appears, the compulsive ritual will be required and it is even possible that over time it will become more and more frequent.
4. Stereotypes and prejudices
Although in this case we are not specifically dealing with a disorder, the truth is that Mowrer’s two-factor theory also has applicability when it comes to offering an explanatory framework for why some prejudices and negative stereotypes can remain active.
And although there are many factors involved, in some cases stereotypes and prejudices arise from a conditioned fear (whether from personal experience or, more commonly, from cultural transmission or vicarious learning) that leads to an avoidance of individuals or subjects with certain characteristics (avoidance becoming an instrumentally conditioned behavior or response).
Likewise, this avoidance means that the fear or rejection can last over time, given that the subject does not manage to extinguish said fear by avoiding not real harm but a fear of suffering harm from these subjects.
In this sense we can be talking about gender stereotypes, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or even political ideology.
Mowrer’s Two-factor Theory provides a valuable framework for understanding the acquisition and maintenance of fear responses and avoidance behaviors in anxiety disorders. By elucidating the roles of classical conditioning and operant conditioning in the development of anxiety-related behaviors, this theory has informed the development of effective behavioral therapies for treating anxiety disorders. However, it is important to recognize the limitations of Mowrer’s model and to consider the contributions of other factors, such as cognition and socioenvironmental influences, in the understanding and treatment of anxiety.
