Albert And Classical Conditioning

While learning to drive a car, I have experienced the elements of classical conditioning. Conditioned stimulus was a car that rapidly stopped in front of me.

The example used in this paper goes back to when I was around seven or eight years old, and I ate some spoiled broccoli and cheese soup. I ended up getting food poisoning from the bad bacteria in the soup, and I was sick for two days. Ever since then, broccoli and cheese soup has made me feel nauseous.

John B Watson the “father of behaviorism once quoted “ Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I will guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief and yes, even beggar man, and thief, regardless of his talents pendants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. Watson had a plan as to what he wanted to accomplish. He new what his goals were. He had a plan as to how he wanted to conduct the Little Albert Experiment and Classical Conditioning. Watson believed that psychology shoed be seen as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, he wanted to see the prediction and control of behavior not just the understanding of the mind (Mcleod, 2008).

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Classical conditioning effects everyday life especially in relation to phobias and addiction which will be discussed in this essay. Classical conditioning was founded by Ivan Pavlov. He believed that if a behaviour can be learned, it can also be unlearned too. This essay will highlight the importance of conditioning principles in explaining and treating problem behaviours. Classical conditioning has revolutionised behavioural therapies, such as flooding and systematic desensitisation to treat phobias, and aversion therapies to treat addictive behaviour.

While many people may believe that learning is just a natural response that all animals are capable of, there is actually a more complex explanation on how we learn the things we do in order to survive in the world. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are both basic forms of learning, they have the word conditioning in common. Conditioning is the acquisition of specific patterns of behavior in the presence of well-defined stimuli.

Classical conditioning is a form of learning that is taught to us through experiences we encounter in our lives. It involves outside stimuli to trigger the condition we have learned to expect. For example, the sound of a lunch bell would trigger our stomach to start growling soon after hearing the bell ring. The expectation of food to come soon after hearing the bell and satisfy our hunger is what makes our stomach growl. This is something learned over time. Expectations can be both good and bad. Sometimes these negative experiences cause us to have certain behaviors when we are reminded of such an event.

Example; you have a cat and the cat just playing around with a ball and when you

Explain the initial pairing of the banging bar and the rat in terms of learning through classical conditioning.

Little Albert’s was chosen because of his strong emotional stability and researches think his personality could be “relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments…” (Wastson & Rayner, 1920, p. 3). However, from psychologists’ point of view, his emotional reaction was far from mild and experimenters did not put effort to comfort him (Smith & Haslam, 2012). Although the principles of classical conditioning are useful in treatment of phobias and even medical implications, it is questioned whether its worth to cause harm to the subject in order to complete the study. The unethical research method of classic studies brings potential damages to the participants (Russell & Purcell, 2009). The ignorance of such damages overrates the experimental result and conclusion. Studies should be morally and ethically grounded.

The preliminary idea is testing the theory of Pavlov’s Theory. I will be testing on my boyfriend. The condition stimulus will be a doorbell noise that I will play and then right after I play the noise I will through a piece of chocolate at him. I am testing to see how long it will take his brain to get trained that when I play the doorbell noise he will know that the piece of chocolate is going to get thrown at him. He will soon learn the relationship of the sound effect and the chocolate.

Some ideas cannot be learned while asleep and must be associated with feelings. The way the government in Brave New World manipulates feelings is through a process called classical conditioning. This process was first made famous by a man, which the book alludes to quite frequently, Ivan Pavlov. Classical conditioning is the process of associating a negative or positive feeling with a specific action. The more complex ideas can be taught to children using classical conditioning, which the Director explains as he gives students a tour of the Hatchery. After children of the Delta class are shown books and flowers, the Director initiates an electric shock and a series of sirens, explosions, and other unpleasant noises in order to make the children

John’s simple annoyance tactic turned into a full blown Classical Conditioning experiment when he realized that he could condition his subject to react almost subconsciously to air being blown in its face. Though it was not originally planned to be an experiment it is a great example of Classical Conditioning.

Watson and Rayner claim, “These experiments would seem to show conclusively that directly conditioned emotional responses as well as those conditioned by transfer persist, although with a certain loss in the intensity of the reaction, for a longer period than one month.” The data reported in this paper definitely supports this conclusion. The purpose of this experiment was to test the theory of classical conditioning as well as transfer (stimulus generalization); and to see if they would be able to successfully condition an emotional response of fear.

Using examples of both classical and operant conditioning, discuss the contributions and limitations of learning theory for the understanding of behaviour (Schacter et al., 2nd Ed, Chapter 6, also see Chapter 1 for historical context)