Classical Conditioning

Psychology 100

Classical Conditioning

In behaviorism, classical conditioning is a kind of learning in which a person or animal comes to associate two kinds of stimuli, one that naturally prompts a given behavior and one that does not. In the early twentieth century Ivan Pavlov illustrated classical conditioning through experiments with dogs. When food was presented to a dog, the dog naturally salivated. After repeatedly hearing a bell when food was presented, the dog salivated upon hearing the bell even in the absence of food. Although the bell initially meant nothing to the dog, it began associating the bell with food. Sometimes classical conditioning depends on the frequency of paired stimuli. Some psychologists believe classical conditioning helps explain learning.

In the movie A Clockwork Orange, the main character in the movie is Alex, an adolescent who is prone to the extreme violence of assault, murder, and rape. After being betrayed by his friends who have just helped him break into a home and rape a woman, he is sent to prison. There he manipulates several people into thinking that he sincerely wants to be reformed, so he is chosen for an experimental study in which they will try to “cure” him of his violent tendencies. To do this, they inject Alex each day with a drug that is designed to cause extreme nausea in which they don’t tell him this instead they tell him it’s “vitamins”. Then they strap him into a chair and force him to watch a series of extremely violent movies, including everything from rapes to the genocide of the Holocaust. As he’s watching the films, he starts to feel the nausea from the injections. Thus we have classical conditioning and aversion therapy in which Alex now associates any form of violence with feeling “violently” ill. After several weeks of this training, they test him by putting him in various situations that previously would have caused him to become violent. But the “cure” has worked and all Alex can do is stoop...