Classical Conditioning

1. Classical Conditioning in Real Life
Dr. Pratibha Sagar
Department of Education

2. Real Life Situations
 Learning to like
 Learning to fear
 Accounting for taste
 Reacting to medical treatments
 Prejudice
 Phobias
 Advertising

3. Learning to Like
 Where do sentimental feelings
come from?
 Objects have been associated in
the past with positive feelings.

4. Learning to Like

5. Learning to Fear
An 11-month old boy – named
“Albert” – was conditioned to
fear a white laboratory rat
Each time he reached for the
rat, Watson made a loud
clanging noise right behind
Albert

6. Learning to Fear

7. Learning to Fear
Albert’s fear generalized to
anything white and furry
◦Including rabbits and Santa
Claus

8. Unlearning Fear
 Counter conditioning
The process of pairing a
conditioned stimulus with a
stimulus that elicits a response
that is incompatible with an
unwanted conditioned response.

9. Unlearning Fear
 Counter conditioning
Another child’s fear of
rabbits was removed by
pairing the stimulus which
elicited fear with a stimulus
that elicited happiness.

10. Unlearning Fear

11. Unlearning Fear
Flooding is a behavioral fear-
reduction technique based on
principles of classical
conditioning. Fear-evoking stimuli
are presented continuously in the
absence of actual harm so that fear
response are extinguished.

12. Unlearning Fear
Systematic desensitization is a
behavioral fear-reduction
technique in which as hierarchy
of fear-evoking stimuli is
presented while the person
remains relaxed.

13. Accounting for Taste
 Classical conditioning can
also explain how we learn to
like and dislike many foods
and odours.

14. Accounting for Taste
 Researchers have taught
animals to dislike foods or
odours by pairing them with
drugs that cause nausea or
other unpleasant symptoms.

15. Accounting for Taste
 Humans also quickly learn
to associate illness with food
even when the food is not
the cause of becoming sick.

16. Reacting to Medical Treatments
 Stimuli associated with drug
treatments that produce nausea can
become conditioned stimuli,
creating problems for cancer
patients undergoing chemotherapy.

17. Reacting to Medical Treatments
 Non-drug treatments, such as placebos,
are a beneficial application of classical
conditioning, through association with
real drugs.

18. Prejudice
Prejudice—the Clark Study in the
1930’s and Powell-Hopson &
Hopson in the 1980’s illustrate how
prejudice can be classically
conditioned through repeated
pairings of characteristics or traits
with one group of people.

19. Phobias
Phobias—through the
application of Watson’s
experiment and understanding
of conditioned emotional
responses (CER), we can
understand irrational fears and
how to treat them.

20. Advertising
Advertising—John B. Watson
proved that, if you lose your job
as a psychologist for unethical
behavior, you can always be
welcomed into the field of
advertising 

21. Advertising
Advertising pairs neutral stimuli
(the product) with positive
conditioned stimuli (models, sex,
fun)
The reverse can also be true when
creating negative associations such
as in political advertising

22. Applying Classical Conditioning
Conditioned Fears
◦We have preferences for some
fears
They are learned more quickly
and the associations last longer,
even during the extinction phase

23. Applying Classical Conditioning
Social Behaviors
◦People form strong positive
and negative attitudes toward
neutral objects by virtue of
their links to emotionally
charged stimuli

24. Applying Classical Conditioning
Immune System
◦Preliminary research shows
that we can slow/bolster the
immune system through
classical conditioning

25. Classical Conditioning in Humans
 Phobia: Intense, unrealistic, irrational
fear of a specific situation or object
(e.g., arachnophobia, fear of spiders)
 Conditioned Emotional Response
(CER): Learned emotional reaction to a
previously neutral stimulus

26. Classical Conditioning in Humans
Desensitization: Exposing phobic
people gradually to feared stimuli
while they stay calm and relaxed
Vicarious Classical Conditioning:
Learning to respond emotionally to
a stimulus by observing another’s
emotional reactions

27. Figure 7.7