Aversion Therapy

Aversion therapy has been around for a long time and has been effective as well as not. Aversion therapy is a form of behavior modification used to completely rid the person of harmful and unwanted behavior. “The goal of aversion therapy is to have the patient associate the undesirable behavior with something noxious, such as a foul taste, a headache, a hot flash, nausea or vomiting, or profuse sweating” (Aversion therapy, 2009). I found an article to study that is based on using aversion therapy to stop people from smoking. By summarizing the article, explaining the principles of conditioning incorporated in the treatment, and evaluating the effectiveness of the study using these learning principles I will show the aversion therapy in a well-rounded way (Aversion therapy, 2009).

The article I found is “Aversion therapy sends addictions up in smoke” by Wark, P. Described in the article is the use of aversion therapy to help a person quit smoking. Told almost in story form, the purpose of the study is to help the person quit smoking with use of the aversive tactic of rapid smoking (Wark, 2006).

The study was implemented by a man in a white lab coat telling the people in the study to puff every six seconds, very deep puffs, and focus on how they were feeling at the time. Woman number one followed the rules and got through smoking two cigarettes; it was not until the third cigarette that the woman was allowed to stop smoking. When the first woman stopped smoking she felt like she was close to becoming sick, dizzy, and her throat was on fire. The second woman mentioned in the research study took small puffs but put the first cigarette out. Offered another, she kept accepting more cigarettes until she threw a fit of anger and refused to smoke any more (Wark, 2009).

Once the women stopped smoking it was proven that people want to smoke when and how they want and not be pressured by anyone else; they get angry if they cannot smoke how they want. Rapid...