Avoidance behavior

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When avoidance is the fundamental avoid certain situations or actions that are expected by the inconvenience or threats to the body, the soul or the social position, respectively. While flight , freezing , confrontation ( fight ) or other coping strategies are possible reactions to an imminent threat, avoidance is a reaction to internal or external cues that may herald a danger. Some authors differentiate between avoidance behavior and safety behavior . Security behavior is intended to avert or reduce feared consequences and thus reduce the threat of a situation when one is already in the situation that one normally avoids. The anticipatory or imaginary component of avoidance behavior is on the one hand protective, on the other hand it prevents new experiences and can considerably limit life. Since avoidance prevents experience from being able to cope with the situation, avoidance behavior is extremely stable. Avoidance behavior is important in various mental disorders , such as self-insecure avoidant personality disorder , passive-aggressive personality disorder and social phobia .

The SPIN, the LSAS and the BSPS are procedures for recording avoidance behavior in the case of social phobia.

Learning the avoidance behavior

According to the two-process theory of Mowrer and Miller, avoidance behavior is learned through a combination of classic and operant conditioning . With a bad experience, elements of what is happening are learned as indications of a possible danger (classic fear conditioning), which can then herald a threat. If one of these cues then occurs, it triggers all emotional and motivational aspects of the fear response. Avoidance behavior occurs in a kind of temporal shifting of the escape. After successful avoidance, the fear decreases and the person concerned calms down again, which immediately “rewards” the avoidance behavior (so-called negative reinforcement ).

This self-reinforcement of avoidance behavior is an explanation of the pathologization of fear in learning theory (see behavior therapy ).

  • Avoiding a situation prevents someone from knowing that the threat is no longer there or that they are now able to deal with it.
  • Since the mere conception of the danger is sufficient for avoidance, this conception can be expanded in the fantasy and the avoidance behavior can be extended to similar situations (generalization).

The imaginary part thus dominates over the experience. In this sense, therapy represents a return to world experience.

Exploratory behavior versus avoidance behavior

New things and situations usually arouse curiosity and thus stimulate exploration . At the same time, new situations, especially if they occur suddenly, are one of the most important triggers of fear and thus a motive for escape or avoidance. In animal behavior as well as in human perception and behavior, this represents an externally easily observable inner psychological conflict. William McDougall already described this contradicting motive in his 'Social Psychology'. Kurt Lewin examined this approach-avoidance conflict in more detail : often approaching from a distance does not present a major problem at first; The closer you get to the 'unknown', the more the avoidance tendencies increase. In the somewhat stiff earlier conceptual attempts, approach and avoidance gradients were assumed that intersected at a point just before the 'unknown', at which drive and inhibition canceled each other in a persistence between curiosity and fear. If it has become independent, this may be a basis for ' lust for fear '.

decision

Decisions always contain the weighing of alternative courses of action, which can have various advantages and disadvantages. Inner psychological conflicts can arise due to contradicting expectations and motives, which can generate considerable emotional tension. In this respect, Lewin in 1931 generalized the components of the seeking-avoidance conflict (also appetence-aversion conflict, ambivalence conflict) to four different decision-making situations:

  • Seeking-avoiding conflict : The positive and negative consequences of action are balanced, so that the person concerned sees himself slowed down to the point of incapacity to make decisions and act ('Wash my fur, but don't get me wet!').
  • Seeking-seeking conflict : There are two positive alternatives here, but they are mutually exclusive (supposedly or actually): The fable of Buridan's donkey starving between two haystacks because it cannot decide which one to eat first alludes to this ('You can't eat the cake and keep it: want to eat cake and keep it').
  • Avoidance-avoidance conflict : With two negative alternatives, between which one has to choose ('Choice between plague and cholera').
  • Double seeking-avoiding conflict : in most cases, alternative choices have both positive and negative consequences, so that an approach-avoiding conflict can arise for the various goals. (Added in 1938 by Hovland / Sears)

Self control

If, in addition to the cost-benefit analysis of the inner-psychological conflicts, there is also an assessment of the immediate and time-delayed consequences of action, essential aspects of self-control are affected. Because the short-term consequences, according to the learning theories, are significantly more powerful than the long-term, self-control is a particularly difficult learning task.

There are typically two self-control tasks:

  • Avoiding uncomfortably busy situations (school tasks, workplace) leads to even greater problems in the long run (poor school leaving certificate, job loss).
  • The practice of some pleasure-oriented activities (eating behavior, smoking, other consumption) also leads to negative consequences for health or the environment in the long run.

The rationale for many legal restrictions on freedom of choice in our society is linked to this: from compulsory schooling, the educational mandate of parents and the protection of minors to the interference with individual freedom of choice when drugs are prohibited. The social and ecological protective rights, which uphold aspects of human health and sustainability of the economy compared to short-term goals, are based on the knowledge that the pure market laws usually only include short-term optimizations in the calculation (`` After us the deluge '').

Non-psychological theories on avoidance behavior

Basic assumptions of various social sciences are based on a psychology of avoidance behavior.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Kristin Mitte, Thomas Heidenreich, Ulrich Stangier: Diagnostics for social phobias (=  compendia psychological diagnostics . Volume 9 ). Hogrefe, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8017-2043-8 , pp. 46 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ Anne Boos: Cognitive behavior therapy after chronic trauma. A therapy manual . 2nd Edition. Hogrefe, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8017-2316-3 , pp. 203 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
  4. ↑ NE Miller: Learn Able drives and rewards . In: SS Stevens (Ed.): Handbook of experimental psychology . Wiley, New York 1951, pp. 435-472
  5. ↑ William McDougall: Fundamentals of Social Psychology . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1928, p. 42 ff.
  6. ^ Heckhausen, Heckhausen: Motivation and Action . 2006, p. 85 f.