Classical Conditioning (DP IB Psychology): Revision Note

Classical conditioning

• Classical Conditioning (CC) is learning via association and is one of the core assumptions of the behaviourist approach

• The behaviourist approach assumes that:

  • everyone is born as a 'blank slate' which life writes upon

  • all behaviour is learned from the environment, e.g. upbringing, neighbourhood, peers, education

  • Only behaviours which can be directly observed can be measured

    • Lab-based, scientific methods are the only way that behaviour can be studied

  • Animal research may be used as a basis for understanding human behaviour

• Classical conditioning and operant conditioning underpin the principles of behaviourism

Mechanisms of classical conditioning

• CC occurs when a neutral stimulus is substituted for the original unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response 

• An unconditioned stimulus produces a natural, unforced response, i.e. no animal or human has to learn how to feel hunger:

  • The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is the starting point

  • The UCS is a stimulus that produces an unconditioned response (UCR):

    • Food is an UCS as it is a natural, physiological reflex

    • The UCR to food being presented is to salivate/feel hungry

  • The UCS is paired with a neutral stimulus (NS):

    • One which, ordinarily and on its own, does not produce a strong response (neither positive nor negative) e.g. a tone being sounded

  • When the UCS is paired with the NS the response continues to be the UCR, as a result of the UCS

  • After repeated pairings, the NS is presented on its own and elicits the UCR e.g. salivation

  • The NS has thus become the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the salivation has become the conditioned response (CR)

  • When the CS is presented, it will result in the CR

  • The CR is generally not as strong as the UCR

  • After some time, the NS must be paired with the UCS again; otherwise, extinction will occur

Research which supports classical conditioning

Pavlov (1897)

• Pavlov made an accidental discovery that dogs salivated upon hearing the footsteps of the lab technicians bringing them food

• To test what he had discovered, he set up the following procedure:

  1. The dog is given food as usual (UCS)

  2. The dog salivates when it sees and smells the food (UCR)

  3. A bell (NS) is sounded every time the food is presented (the pairing of NS and UCS)

  4. After repeated pairings, the dog salivates when it hears the bell

  5. The bell has become the CS and the salivating to the sound of the bell has become the CR

  6. The dog continues to salivate to the bell; however, when Pavlov stopped pairing the bell and the food, he found that the CR decreased and gradually disappeared (extinction)

Evaluation of classical conditioning

Strengths

• The use of scientific methods (e.g., lab experiments) is reliable

  • Reliability is based on the use of a testable hypothesis

  • Hypothesis testing takes place in controlled conditions using standardised, replicable procedures

    • The above measures produce results which should show consistency over time

    • Thus, research into behaviourism has good reliability

• CC has good application to the treatment of phobias via systematic desensitisation

  • The phobic (conditioned) stimulus is gradually converted back to being a neutral stimulus via deconditioning (reversing the process of CC)

Limitations

• Whilst CC may explain some forms of behaviour, it cannot explain all behaviour

  • E.g., behaviour which is spontaneous or original, such as dyeing your hair bright blue

  • Behaviour which resists conditioning e.g., someone who has been brought up in a strict religious environment who goes on to reject that religion

    • This means that classical conditioning has limited external validity

• Behaviourism is highly deterministic (environmental determinism)

  • The assumption is that people are controlled by environmental forces and have little autonomy over their destiny

    • This assumption negates the role of free will in behaviour, which reduces the usefulness of the approach, seeing people in almost mechanical terms

Link to concepts

Perspective

• It is simplistic to assume humans can be ‘programmed’ by conditioning, as this ignores the many variables influencing behaviour

• This reflects environmental reductionism, reducing behaviour to stimulus-response links

• CC suggests phobias form when a neutral stimulus (NS) becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) through an unpleasant pairing with a UCS (e.g., choking on a cotton wool ball)

• This may explain unusual phobias (e.g., cotton wool, buttons, ketchup) but is less convincing for phobias of genuinely dangerous stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders, heights)

• The biological preparedness explanation argues humans are hard-wired to fear survival threats, making CC only a partial explanation of phobias

Measurement

• Behaviourism values only observable behaviour, allowing clear, operationalised procedures

• However, it ignores cognition, limiting explanatory power

• E.g., memory cannot be directly observed, only inferred, meaning CC cannot explain many important psychological processes