We’re all afraid of something. This fear is usually an adaptive emotion as it allows us to adjust our behavior to survive. However, sometimes fears or panic reactions can arise 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 remain in time?

Although there are many hypotheses in this respect, 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.

Mowrer’s bifactorial theory

Orval Hobart Mowrer’s bifactorial theory is an explanatory model first proposed by the author in 1939, which proceeds and attempts to provide an explanatory framework as to why a phobic stimulus that causes us fear or anxiety continues to produce it over time despite the fact that the association between it and the unconditioned stimulus that caused it to generate fear has been extinguished.

Thus, this theory starts from the behavioralist paradigm and the theories of learning 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 make the association between stimulus and discomfort gradually disappear).

In this sense, the author indicates that phobias and fears appear and are maintained through a process of conditioning that occurs in two phases , one in which the initial fear or panic appears and a second in which the behavioural response to this in the form of avoidance generates the reinforcement of the fear, by avoiding not the aversion 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 an explanation of why phobias and fears remain and sometimes even increase with time . These two phases would be the following.

Classic conditioning

Firstly, the process known as classical conditioning is produced: a stimulus that is initially neutral is associated with a stimulus that generates per se sensations of pain or suffering (unconditioned stimulus), and through this association it ends up acquiring the characteristics of the latter (going from being neutral to conditioned), with which the same response ends up being emitted that would be carried out in the presence of the original aversive stimulus (a conditioned response is then given).

As an example, the appearance of white light (in principle, a neutral stimulus) in a room can be associated with an electrical discharge (unconditioned aversive stimulus) if presented together repeatedly.

This will cause the person, who would initially run away from the discharge (unconditioned response) but not from the light, to end up running away from the white light by relating it to the pain (conditioned response). In fact, technically this could cause a phobia of white light, which would lead us to act by fleeing or avoiding its appearance or situations in which it could appear .

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 subside over time if we repeatedly see that the light is not accompanied by electric shocks. How can we explain that the fear is maintained for years?

The response offered by Mowrer’s bifactorial theory 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 that it generates . The fact is that when white light appears, we avoid it or directly prevent exposure to situations in which this light may appear, we are avoiding exposure to the conditioned stimulus.

This may initially seem to us to be an advantage, so that it reinforces our behaviour of avoiding such situations where what we fear may appear. However, the fear cannot be extinguished since what we are basically doing is avoiding the conditioned element , which we have related to the discomfort, and not the discomfort itself. What is avoided is not the aversion, but the stimulus that warns that it may be near.

In this way, we do not expose ourselves 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 it generates in us (in the case of the example, we would learn to avoid white light, but since we are not exposed to experiencing white light we cannot check whether a discharge appears later, which in the end causes the fear of light to persist).

Situations and disorders in which it is applied

Mowrer’s bifactorial 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, having been associated with some kind of aversive stimulation, does not disappear despite the fact that I do not know about the stimulation that generates discomfort or anxiety . In this sense, Mowrer’s bifactorial theory can explain some highly known disorders, among them the following.

1. Phobias

One of the main disorders for which the bifactorial theory offers a plausible explanation is the set 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 , phobias would arise firstly from the association between the feared stimulus and a sensation or experience of pain , discomfort or defenselessness, and then last over time, due to the unconscious attempt 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.

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 a sensation of suffocation, sweating, tremors , a feeling of depersonalization, a sensation of suffering a heart attack, of losing control of one’s body or even of dying.

This highly aversive experience for those who suffer it ends up generating anticipatory anxiety, so that the subject suffers anxiety at the idea of suffering another crisis or may even change their usual behaviour to avoid it.

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 in the face of avoidance as a measure for not experiencing it.

3. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and other obsessive disorders

OCD and other such disorders may also explain why discomfort persists or even increases over time. In OCD, people with the disorder experience intrusive and unacceptable thoughts that cause them great anxiety and that they actively and persistently try to block out.

This anxiety causes them great suffering, and often they may end up generating some kind of mental or physical ritual that temporarily relieves it (even though the subject himself may not find meaning or relationship with the obsessive thoughts to its realization).

This leads to learning through operant conditioning that compulsion becomes the way to reduce anxiety caused by obsessions.

However, this temporary relief is detrimental , because deep down there is an avoidance of what generates the fear, which results in the fear remaining latent. Thus, every time the thought appears, the compulsive ritual will be required and it is even possible that with time this will become more frequent.

4. Stereotypes and prejudices

While this is not a real disorder, Mowrer’s bifactorial theory also has applicability in providing a framework for explaining why some negative prejudices and stereotypes may remain active.

Although there are many factors involved, in some cases stereotypes and prejudices arise from a conditioned fear (either by own experience or, more usually, by cultural transmission or by vicarious learning) that leads to an avoidance of individuals or subjects with certain characteristics (the avoidance becoming an instrumentally conditioned behaviour or response).

Likewise, this avoidance means that the fear or rejection can last over time, given that the subject does not manage to extinguish this fear by avoiding not a real harm but a fear of being harmed by these subjects.

In this sense we can be talking about gender, racial or ethnic stereotypes, 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 de 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.
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