Behavioural Approach to Treating Phobias: Flooding (AQA A Level Psychology)

Flooding

• A less widely-used and more controversial behavioural treatment for phobias is flooding

• Flooding involves a sudden, extreme exposure to the phobic stimulus without any prior build-up or gradual stage-by-stage approach

• Unlike SD, flooding is an 'all or nothing' approach:

  • It does not place the patient in a calm state or have them practice relaxation techniques

  • It may take place in one session lasting a few hours

  • The sudden exposure to the phobic conditioned stimulus is designed to extinguish the fear, e.g.:

    • taking an acrobphobe to a high building and having them stand on the edge of it

    • getting a koumpounophobe to plunge their hands into a box full of buttons

    • immediately putting a spider on an arachnophobe

  • The absence of fear in the face of the conditioned phobic stimulus is known as extinction

  • Extinction - according to flooding therapy - occurs because the patient cannot avoid or escape the phobic stimulus; they just have to deal with it

  • What once filled the patient with fear is now regarded as 'just a spider' or 'just a high building' according to flooding therapy

Evaluation of flooding

Strengths

• Flooding is cheap compared to all other forms of phobia therapy

  • Although individual flooding sessions are usually longer than SD sessions, fewer sessions are needed overall which equals a lower cost to the patient

  • Thus the cost-effective nature of the therapy means that it has beneficial economic implications

• Flooding works well with 'simple', straightforward phobias e.g. arachnophobia and acrophobia which means that those needing the therapy can be easily identified

Limitations

• Flooding can be traumatic for the patient (even though they will have given informed consent prior to the therapy) so it may be ethically compromised

  • Schumacher et al. (2015) found both patients and therapists rated flooding as significantly more stressful than SD

    • This means that the therapy may lack ethical validity

• Flooding is less effective with more complex phobias, such as social phobias 

  • Social phobias involve a variety of different interpersonal interactions dependent on the occasion

  • To be able to navigate the different demands of social events takes some skill and training which flooding cannot provide