The traditional Pavlovian classical conditioning teaches
us that a response can be achieved by association. In humans, it means that a person can
achieve a behavior, or respond to a situation in a specific way, as long as there are
stimuli that trigger such a reaction.
For example, an
associative situation would be when a person hears the sound of a can opening, and the
salivary glands activate associating the sound of the opening can to a nice, cold drink.
Contrastingly, if someone detests soda and hears a can opening, feelings of disgust or
dislike might be produced. All this is what association is
about.
The Pavlovian classical conditioning theory also
states that when a stimulus has not been conditioned to trigger a reaction, the stimulus
is known as an "unconditioned stimulus", or a UCS. An example of a UCS would be when
dogs casually smell food and start to salivate. The smell of food is an everyday
incident in the lives of domesticated dogs. Therefore, the reactions of the dogs are
natural and predictable.
When the stimulus has been
prepared to draw a specific reaction from an individual, then that stimulus becomes
known as a "conditioned stimulus" , or CS. Similarly, the reaction that the conditioned
stimulus produces is known as a "conditioned response", or CR, because it is part of an
experimental process.
An example of a CS would be using an
object to cause pain or fear. If the object has been conditioned to instill feelings of
fear in an individual, then the object takes a new meaning for the person, creating a
reaction of anxiety or fear when the object is shown.
In a
different note, classical conditioning also shows us that dissociation can be used to
break the associations that may trigger negative responses in humans. For instance,
dissociative therapy may help some patients control common phobias by removing the
negative stimulus away from an object that once caused
fear.
Therefore, classical conditioning is a great way to
understand and predict human behavior.
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