Many of us have heard of Pavlov's dog, so we know how one might make a dog salivate at the sound of the bell. But what good is that when it comes to our daily lives? Let's look at the application of classical conditioning in psychology, therapy, teaching, and more.
- First, let's discuss the application of classical conditioning in psychology.
- Next, what is the practical application of classical conditioning?
- What is the application of classical conditioning in therapy?
- As we continue, we'll look at the application of classical conditioning in teaching and learning.
- What is a modern application of classical conditioning?
- Finally, what is the application of classical conditioning in daily life?
Application of Classical Conditioning in Psychology
Classical conditioning can be widely used in psychology. Remember, classical conditioning is an unconscious way of learning where you are taught to react in a certain way when presented with a stimulus.
In psychology, there are many options for the use of classical conditioning. Ivan Pavlov, the first person to research classical conditioning, discovered the phenomenon with hungry dogs in his lab. Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning.
Associative learning refers to the pairing of two or more things together in time and space.
The dog's food causes it to salivate, the unconditioned response (UCR). Pavlov took the dog's food, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), and paired it with the sound of the bell, the conditioned stimulus (CS). Eventually, the sound of the bell caused the dog to salivate, the conditioned response (CR).
Application of Classical Conditioning in Psychology: PTSD
An example of classical conditioning in psychology is the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, more commonly known as PTSD. Someone develops PTSD when they experience an extremely intense, traumatic, or tragic event. A subset of the population with a higher risk of developing PTSD is veterans.
During their time overseas, veterans likely experienced loud noises such as explosions, bombs, and gunshots (UCS). These experiences caused a fear reaction (UCR). When they come home, the sound of a loud crash or bang (CS) similar to the sounds they experienced overseas might cause a fear response (CR).
Have you ever considered who you could negatively impact when setting fireworks off? The loud fireworks explosions can be highly triggering for someone with PTSD since they have been classically conditioned to associate those loud noises with trauma.
Practical Application of Classical Conditioning
We all have things we don’t like or are afraid of but some people possess phobias, fears of specific objects, or intense and often unrealistic situations. Let’s use arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, as our example.
People aren’t born with phobias – often, they result from a traumatic experience. For someone with arachnophobia, spiders started as a neutral stimulus that didn’t cause intense feelings of fear or anxiety for the learner. However, the person may have had a random, traumatic experience that caused them to develop a phobia.
Fig. 1. Are you scared of spiders?
This experience could be getting bit by a spider, having a spider fall on its head, or accidentally sitting in a spider's nest. What used to be a neutral stimulus, the spiders, gets paired with fear. This pairing causes the spiders to become the conditioned stimulus eliciting the conditioned response, fear.
As with other examples of classical conditioning, phobias can get deconditioned, but it takes time and patience.
Application of Classical Conditioning in Therapy
Concepts of classical conditioning can also be useful when treating mental health conditioning. We can see the application of classical conditioning in therapy when we look at aversion therapy and exposure therapy.
Application of Classical Conditioning in Therapy: Aversion Therapy
People who struggle with addiction can go to therapy to help fight their abuse since addiction to substances does result in a chemical change in the brain. Aversion therapy can help these patients by applying concepts of classical conditioning to discourage them from using that substance.
Aversion therapy is a type of psychotherapy that has the patient associate something unpleasant with an undesired behavior or habit with the goal to reduce or eliminate it.
A doctor or therapist can prescribe the patient medicine (UCS) that will make the substance user feel nauseous (UCR) every time they use substances. Instead of the substance eliciting a pleasurable feeling, the user will feel sick. Eventually, the user will be conditioned to feel nauseous (CR) any time they think about using that substance (CS), thanks to classical conditioning.
Avoiding nausea will supersede the good feeling of the high, resulting in no more drug abuse.
Aversion therapy is typically most effective in treating alcoholism.
Application of Classical Conditioning in Therapy: Extinction in Exposure Therapy
Classical conditioning can also be applied to therapy for phobias as well. One common therapy for phobias is exposure therapy in which the patient is asked to face their phobia directly. This is under the assumption that some event in that person's past caused them to be afraid, leading to the development of a phobia.
Say you have agoraphobia, an intense and irrational fear of leaving the house because the last time you left the house, you got in a car accident. While in exposure therapy, your therapist asks you to leave the house, in whatever capacity you're comfortable with, every day.
In this case, the car accident (UCS) caused you to experience fear (UCR). You associated that fear with leaving the house (CS) and eventually, every time you did, you felt an intense amount of fear (CR)
The more you leave the house and return unharmed, the less you associate leaving the house with the fear you experienced in that accident. This may be due to a classical conditioning phenomenon called extinction.
Extinction is when the CR (fear of leaving the house) is gradually weakened and eventually removed when the subject is repeatedly exposed to the CS (leaving the house) without associating it with the UCS (car accident).
Application of Classical Conditioning in Teaching and Learning
As you might assume by now, classical conditioning is also applicable in a school environment, regardless of whether it’s intentional or not by the teacher. The application of classical conditioning in teaching and learning can take many different shapes.
For example, a 2nd grade teacher may have a difficult time getting their class to settle down and listen so they can learn the new lesson. So starting at the beginning of the year, just before it's time for the class to quiet down and listen, the teacher plays a short jingle and instructs the class to quiet down (UCS). They do (UCR). The first few times, the teacher has to continue to instruct the class that it was time to quiet down. But eventually, as this process is repeated several times, the teacher does not need to say anything at all. The class learns to immediately quiet down (CR) as soon as they hear that jingle (CS).
In this example, the teacher counts on a phenomenon called acquisition to get the children to quiet down just at the sound of the jingle.
Acquisition is when the CS and the UCS are repeatedly paired together.
The more the two are paired together, the stronger the conditioned response. People learn the most in the first few pairings and build their understanding of that.
Modern Application of Classical Conditioning
When considering the modern application of classical conditioning, what comes to mind? If you thought about the media, you'd be right. We can see a modern application of classical conditioning when we consider advertising in the media. Ad makers have a good grasp of the basic premise of classical conditioning -- you can pair one stimulus with another, and cause the person to have the same response, even when that stimulus is not present.
You see an advertisement for a new restaurant that has great music and bright, beautiful pictures. Then the next time you see or think of that restaurant, you have the same feelings you had that were associated with the music and imagery in the ad.
Cigarette and vaping companies also use these concepts of classical conditioning in their advertisements. They want teens to associate smoking with being or looking cool.
Fig. 2 - Smoking advertisements. Cigarette companies try to make smoking look cool even though it's extremely harmful to one's health
Application of Classical Conditioning in Daily Life
There are many applications of classical conditioning in daily life. Since it is an unconscious form of learning, the learner doesn’t have to be aware that they are being conditioned, opening the door to the possibility of conditioning someone without them knowing.
If you have siblings, this might be just the thing for you!
Since the learner (your sibling) doesn’t have to know they’re getting conditioned, the door is open for you to condition them to do anything. Well, maybe not anything, but more things than if they weren’t conditioned.
You could get them to take out the trash, do the laundry, clean your room, or stop annoying you through conditioning by associating these behaviors with a positive stimulus. Conditioning does take time; however, it can pay off if you successfully condition your sibling.
Application of Classical Conditioning - Key takeaways
- Classical conditioning is an unconscious way of learning where the learner is taught to behave or react when presented with a stimulus
- Aversion therapy can help these patients by applying concepts of classical conditioning to discourage them from using that substance.
- Classical conditioning can be used to explain why people develop phobias -- they are conditioned to pair a previously neutral stimulus with fear, causing irrational fear
- We can see a modern application of classical conditioning when we consider advertising in the media. Ad makers recognize that you can pair one stimulus with another, and cause the person to have the same response, even when that stimulus is not present.
- There are many applications of classical conditioning in daily life. Since it is an unconscious form of learning, the learner doesn’t have to be aware that they are being conditioned, opening the door to the possibility of conditioning someone without them knowing.
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