Why Behavior Analysts Should Study Emotion: The Example of Anxiety

Abstract

Historically, anxiety has been a dominant subject in mainstream psychology but an incidental or even insignificant one in behavior analysis. We discuss several reasons for this discrepancy. We follow with a behavior-analytic conceptualization of anxiety that could just as easily be applied to emotion in general. Its primary points are (a) that languageable humans have an extraordinary capacity to derive relations between events and that it is a simple matter to show that neutral stimuli can acquire discriminative functions indirectly with no direct training; (b) that private events can readily acquire discriminative functions; (c) that anxiety disorders seem to occur with little apparent direct learning or that the amount of direct learning is extraordinarily out of proportion with the amount of responding; and (d) that the primary function of anxious behavior is experiential avoidance. We conclude that the most interesting aspects of anxiety disorders may occur as a function of derived rather than direct relations between public events and overt and private responses with avoidance functions. Implicit in this conclusion and explicit in the paper is the assertion that anxiety is a suitable subject for behavior-analytic study.

Fear Generalization in Humans: Systematic Review and Implications for Anxiety Disorder Research

“…Avoidance may become debilitating and lead to impaired social functioning and, because of this, it is often the sole target of therapeutic change. While there is evidence for perceptual generalization of avoidance (Lommen et al, 2010;van Meurs et al, 2014), extending the analysis of symbolic generalization to include instances of avoidance is important in developing contemporary accounts of the emergence of clinical anxiety (Field, 2006;Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998;Mineka & Zinbarg, 2006;Rachman, 1977). The first supporting evidence for this approach comes from Augustson and Dougher (1997), who trained and tested participants for the formation of two, four-member stimulus equivalence relations (A1-B1-C1-D1 and A2-B2-C2-D2) and then used a differential fear conditioning procedure to establish B1 as CS+ and BS as CS-, respectively.…”

The interfering effect of emotional stimulus functions on stimulus equivalence class formation: implications for the understanding and treatment of anxiety

“…comed, particularly when viewed in the light of a number of review articles that appeared just over a decade earlier, which highlighted the lack of basic behavior-analytic research on such prevalent problem behaviours as anxiety and avoidance (e.g., Forsyth & Eifert, 1996;Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998).…”

“…Moreover, many behavior analysts now agree that verbal processes are likely involved in the acquisition of complex forms of anxiety (e.g., Augustson & Dougher, 1997;Dougher, 1998;Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2000;Dymond & Roche, 2009;Forsyth, 2000;Forsyth & Eifert, 1996;Friman, et al, 1998;Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999;Hayes & Wilson, 1993Tierney & Bracken, 1998). The role of verbal behavior in behavior-analytic accounts of anxiety has been revisited with a view to addressing gaps in our understanding of the processes involved in the development, maintenance, and treatment of clinical anxiety (e.g., Dougher, Hamilton, Fink, & Harrington, 2007;Dymond, Roche, Forsyth, Whelan, & Rhoden, 2007;Wray, et al, 2009).…”

“…The avoidance response was shown to transfer to the other members of the particular equivalence class and not to members of the other equivalence class (A2-B2-C2-D2). The authors used the observed transfer of function across stimulus equivalence classes to help explain, at least in part, the aetiologies of avoidance responses that appear to have emerged in the absence of any explicit history of reinforcement for avoidance in the natural environment, while acknowledging that as a mere experimental analogue the levels of conditioned responding observed were not clinically significant (see also Dougher, et al, 2007;Dymond, et al, 2007;Friman, et al, 1998;Roche, Barnes-Holmes, Smeets, Barnes-Holmes, & McGready, 2000).…”

Private events: Do they belong in a science of human behavior?

“…As mentioned earlier, DeGrandpre et al (1992) established that both private and public stimuli can be members of the same equivalence class. In addition to empirical work, theoretical discussions (e.g., Anderson et al, 1997;Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998;Horne & Lowe, 1996) are advancing our understanding of the role of private events in a science of human behavior. Together, recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that behavior analysts are beginning to evaluate empirically how we can incorporate private events into our science.…”