What are some examples of classical conditioning in your life?

Question

I am drawing a blank, and I need examples for my paper!

Answer 1

Ok, just think of Pavlov and his dogs (not sure if you covered that in your class or not, but basically he is the one that started the ball rolling on this theory). Let's just say Pavlov wakes up and feeds his dogs everyday at the same time, let's say 9am. The dogs really like food and salivate when they see it coming out. This goes on for a year. After a year, he decided to introduce something new into the formula...a bell ringing as he is feeding the dogs....in psych terms that would be a conditioned stimulus (just CS for short). Of course, the dogs are still salivating when Pavlov comes out with the food....Ok, so another year passes by with this happening. So now into the third year Pavlov rings the bell but does not put any food out. The dogs salivate anyway...This is because an association was made (by the dogs) between the bell ringing and the food.

So here is what happened.
1) food-------salivation unconditioned stimulus (UCS)--Unconditioned response (UCR)

2) food paired with bell------salivation
UCS paired with CS ----- UCR

3) food removed, bell only ------ salivation
CS --- CR (conditioned response)

So how can this be applied to everyday life? Here are a few I can think of.
--we get some really bad news while a certain song is playing and we get this terrible feeling. Next time we hear that song, we get the same feeling. The CS in this case is the song.
--We go to a certain restaurant to eat and get very sick when we eat the pasta with clam sauce. Are we likely to eat pasta with clam sauce for a while? What about go to that restaurant? (In this case you can have either the CS being the food or the restaurant depending on the behavior).
--Many superstitions arise this way...I wouldn't be surprised if someone once died while they were walking under a ladder from something totally unrelated to the ladder (e.g. a heart attack) but someone else made a false association between the ladder and the death and it developed into "bad luck to walk under ladders".
--In the movie/book A Clockwork Orange we see this...the main character is getting in trouble with the law, goes to jail, and receives a controversial treatment in which he is injected with a medication that makes him nauseous (but he doesn't know this) and then is exposed to violent movie images as the nausea kicks in. Over time, he becomes conditioned against violence and is released. Any type of violence makes him sick.


Those are just some I can think of right now. Hope it helped!

Answer 2

There is a scientist who would ring a bell every time he fed his dog, he did this for weeks/months, then when he rung a bell his dog would automatically start to salivate and go to his food bowl.

This happened in an episode of The Office, Jim would give Dwight a mint evrytime he turned on his computer and it made the little windows start up sound, then one day he turned on his computer and Dwight automatically held his hand out and said,

"I dont know what it is, but my mouth tastes horrible for some reason."

Answer 3

I go to the intersection and stop - --- the sign says do not walk - I do not walk -

I get on the bus and sit down the driver yells out

Queen St ---- I get up pull the bell and get off -

The driver hears the bell and he stops to let me out at Queen St -


When I get on the subway I hear the chime go off and I know I have missed my train because that means the door is closeing - So I go from a run to a walk -

I walk into the bank and I see a cattle style rope beding a line around a few truns -----

No questioning here I just get into that one - behind whoever

Answer 4

When I was about four years old, I learned how to ride my bike. I was able to keep up with my older brothers a little bit.

Answer 5

When someone calls out your name, you look for them and listen. That is conditioning. Good night!

Answer 6

learning any habit at all, be it good or bad. like smoking.