Mowrer's bifactorial 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 can appear to elements that may not pose a real danger.

When we talk about these fears or the existence of anxiety, we often ask ourselves: why do they appear? How do they appear? Why do they stay in time?

Although there are many hypotheses in this regard, one of the best known and especially linked to the answer to the second of the questions is Mowrer's bifactorial theory. And it is about this theory that we are going to talk throughout this article.

• Related article: "Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors"

Mowrer's bifactorial theory

The bifactorial theory of Orval Hobart Mowrer is an explanatory model that the author first proposed in 1939 and that proceeds and attempts to offer an explanatory framework regarding why a phobic stimulus that causes us fear or anxiety continues to produce it over time despite the fact that the association between this and the unconditioned stimulus that caused us to generate fear has been extinguished.

Thus, this theory starts at its origin from the behaviorist paradigm and the theories of learning to try to explain why they are acquired and especially why fears and phobias remain, especially when we avoid situations or stimulations that generate anxiety (something that in principle should make the association between stimulus and discomfort disappear little by little).

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 this in form of avoidance generates that fear is reinforced, by avoiding not the aversive but that with which it has been associated.

The two factors or phases

As we have just mentioned, Mowrer establishes in his bifactorial 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 giving a explanation of why phobias and fears remain and sometimes even increase over time. These two phases would be the following.

Classical conditioning

In the first place, the process known as classical conditioning occurs: a stimulus that is initially neutral is associated with a stimulus that generates pain sensations per se or suffering (unconditioned stimulus), and through this association it ends up acquiring its own characteristics (going from being neutral to conditioned), with ends up emitting the same response that would be made in the presence of the original aversive stimulus (A conditioned response is then given).

As an example, the appearance of a white light (in principle, a neutral stimulus) in a room can reach be associated with an electric shock (unconditioned aversive stimulus) if they occur together in a repeated.

This will cause the person, who initially would flee from the discharge (unconditioned response) but not from the light, 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.

• Related article: "Classical conditioning and its most important experiments"

Instrumental conditioning

In the previous step we have seen how a fear or phobia of an initially neutral stimulus, a white light, was formed. But in principle this panic should go away over time if we repeatedly see that the light is not accompanied by electric shocks. How could we explain that fear persists for years?

The answer that Mowrer's bifactorial theory offers to this maintenance of phobias and anxieties is that it is due to the appearance of instrumental conditioning, in this case of the response and negative reinforcement generated by doing it. And it is that when the white light appears we avoid it or directly prevent us 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 that it reinforces our behavior of avoiding such 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 the 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, one does not get to be exposed to the phobic stimulus without it being related to the original aversive stimulus, so that we lose the association made and the fear and anxiety that it generates (in the case of the example, we would learn to avoid white light, but since We do not expose ourselves to experiencing white light we cannot check if a discharge appears later, which in the background causes fear to persist to the light).

Situations and disorders in which it applies

Mowrer's bifactorial theory proposes an explanatory model that, although not without criticism, has often been used as one of the main hypothesis regarding the reason why a fear or anxiety that makes us avoid a stimulus, as this has been associated with some type of stimulation aversive, It does not disappear even though I do not know of the stimulation that causes us discomfort or anxiety. In this sense, Mowrer's bifactorial theory can explain some well-known disorders, including the following.

1. Phobias

One of the main disorders for which the bifactorial theory offers a plausible explanation is the cluster of phobic disorders. In this sense we can include both specific phobias to a certain stimulus or situation to other more general ones such as social phobia or even agoraphobia.

Under this paradigm the phobias would arise in the first place before the association between the feared stimulus and a sensation or experience of pain, discomfort or defenselessness to later last in time due to the fact that at an unconscious level they try to avoid future or possible similar situations.

This means that over time the fear not only remains but often even increases, generating anticipation (which in turn generates anguish) despite not facing the situation itself.

• You may be interested: "Types of Phobias: Exploring Fear Disorders"

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 choking sensation, sweating, tremors, feeling of depersonalization, feeling of having a heart attack, losing control of your own body or even dying.

This highly aversive experience for the person who suffers it ends up generating anticipatory anxiety, so that the subject suffers anxiety at the idea of ​​having another crisis or you may even change your habitual behavior to avoid them.

In this sense, Mowrer's bifactorial 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 not to experience it.

3. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Other Obsessive Disorders

OCD and other similar disorders can also explain the reason for the persistence or even increase in discomfort over time. In OCD, people who suffer from it experience intrusive and unacceptable living thoughts, which generate great anxiety and that they actively and persistently attempt to block.

This anxiety causes them great suffering, and often they can end up generating some type of mental or physical ritual that temporarily relieves (although the subject himself may not find sense or relationship with the obsessive thoughts to his 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 detrimental, since deep down there is an avoidance of what generates fear, which has as a result that it remains latent. Thus, each time the thought appears, the compulsive ritual will be required and it is even possible that over time this will become more and more frequent.

4. Stereotypes and prejudices

Although in this case we are not properly dealing with a disorder, the truth is that Mowrer's bifactorial theory also has applicability in providing an explanatory framework for why some negative stereotypes and prejudices may remain assets.

And it is that although there are many factors involved, in some cases stereotypes and prejudices arise from a fear conditioned (either by personal experience or, more commonly, by cultural transmission or by vicarious learning) what 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 persist over time, since the subject does not manages to extinguish this fear by avoiding not real harm but a fear of suffering harm from these subjects.

In this sense, we may be talking about stereotypes of gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or even political ideology.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition. DSM-V. Masson, Barcelona.
• Belloch, Sandín and Ramos (2008). Manual of Psychopathology. McGraw-Hill. Madrid.
• Froján, M.X., de Prado, M.N. and from Pascual, R. (2017). Cognitive techniques and language: A return to behavioral origins. Psicothema, 29 (3): 352-357.
• Mowrer, O.H. (1939). A Stimulus-Response Analysis of Anxiety and its Role as a reinforcing agent. Psychological Review, 46 (6): 553-565.
• Mowrer, O.H. (1954). The psychologist looks at language. American Psychologist, 9 (11): 660-694.
• Santos, J.L.; García, L.I.; Calderón, M.A.; Sanz, L.J.; de los Ríos, P.; Izquierdo, S.; Roman, P.; Hernangómez, L.; Navas, E.; Ladrón, A and Álvarez-Cienfuegos, L. (2012). Clinical psychology. CEDE PIR Preparation Manual, 02. CEDE. Madrid.