Classical conditioning is a form of learning that allows us to associate events together. Researchers found that people and animals could be conditioned to react both negatively and positively to a stimulus. Ivan Pavlov, was the first to discover this phenomenon in dogs. There are five components to classical conditioning; the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, neutral stimulus, conditioned response, and conditioned response. In Pavlov’s experiments, dogs were conditioned to salivate after hearing a bell ring. Before doing this, he first discovered that his dogs salivated at the sight of food. In this case, the salivation is the unconditioned response, to the sight of food which is the unconditioned stimulus. To condition the dogs, Pavlov brought in a neutral stimulus, which was the ringing of a bell. He would pair the neutral stimulus(tone of a bell) and the unconditioned stimulus(food), to create the unconditioned response(salivation). After conditioning the dogs like this, the neutral stimulus(tone of a bell) would stimulate the unconditioned response(salivation). The neutral stimulus is now considered the conditioned stimulus which creates the conditioned response(salivation). Classical conditioning is not limited to dogs, people can be conditioned too. Example of this are little Albert which was a boy who was conditioned to hate rats.
In my own life, after learning about this in class, I got inspired to try and classically condition someone, but then I realized that I had unintentionally already done that. Every night, me and my roommate have tea together. It’s a great way to wind down and it’s good for the soul. However, my roommate never bothered to wash her mug until the day after. So every night, when I would be boiling the water, I would have to tell her to wash her mug. After a few times of telling her to do so, I no longer had to tell her. Now, I have realized that I have conditioned her to wash her mug because every night that I boil the water and open the tea bags, she goes and washes her mug. Ain’t that funny?
Classical conditioning – statpearls – NCBI bookshelf. (n.d.). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470326/