March 18, 2025

Monique Nguyen

11th Grade

Fountain Valley High School

Introduction

Interestingly enough, there was a meme that circulated recently about a girl that had intentionally “Pavlov’d” herself, manipulating her behavioral response to feel happy at will. Though many doubt its validity, in that story, the girl would carry around a clicker, and every time something “good” happened-inducing a positive emotion or feeling of joy-she would click a little clicker afterwards. She would “click” multiple times, repeatedly everyday at school, until it was a mechanized response. Her brain would recognize that a click indicated a positive behavior, and she could click to feel a sense of happiness on a whim, or at least that’s how the story goes. In reality, there are several complexities within behaviorism to consider when dealing with this branch of psychology. But, the concept of Pavalovian or classical conditioning-creating a stimulus that would initiate a mechanized, unconscious response-has provided a basis for both developmental research as well as unconscious human functions. 

The Experiment

Behaviorism, the branch of psychology that focuses on how humans react and don’t react to their environment, creates a focus on a stimulus and response-type of learning. Referred to as classical conditioning, it initially developed from Ivan Pavlov’s Dog Experiment in 1902 – an accidental find – where he monitored how dogs would have an unconditioned (automated) response of salivation towards an unconditioned stimulus of food. The food is introduced as a positive reinforcement, meaning that it encourages behavior, so for reference, this is also similar to operant conditioning, the reward and punishment system; but, both types of learning differ in their processes. Anyway, after testing the dog’s innate stimulus and response behavior, Pavlov then introduced a bell that rang repeatedly before the indicated reward, which is a concept known as acquisition; the dogs would later salivate with every ring of the bell instead of the initial stimulus of food. Now, the bell was a neutral stimulus, meaning that it initially had no effect with the salivating response or food until it was conditioned to be a stimulus and could initiate a conditioned response through repetition and association. Pavlov’s experiment, along with similar experiments like Little Albert by Watson in 1920 to elicit fear responses in humans with animals or Edwin Twitmyer’s preceding study of conditioning, gave basis to the theory of learning, specifically labelling this process as associated learning. 

Pavlov had also established that there was a relationship between the interval of the bell and the appearance of food, studying its necessity. For the initial unconditioned stimulus to maintain the conditional response, such as the bell to keep eliciting salivation in a particular dog, it is necessary to keep presenting food after a bell ring, but if the innate stimulus is not maintained, the conditional response would fade. This is later known as extinction or the law of temporal contiguity, though, there is a possibility of spontaneous recovery, where the conditioned response returns even after a period of extinction. Moreover, there were orders to this type of associated learning: the first-order conditioning, pairing a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned one, as well as second-order conditioning, adding in an unrelated unique stimulus. For example, the experiment between the bell and the food initiated first-order conditioning, but if Pavlov had added something random, such as pairing a circle with the bell, the dog would eventually have the same conditioned response with the circle as well. Generalization is a concept that is similar to this idea, where the introduction of a similarly conditioned stimulus, like a buzzer, could elicit the dog to salivate as well. Yet, there is also the possibility of discrimination, where the subject can differentiate between the conditioned stimulus and other sounds, for instance, the bell and a whistle, so all of these factors contribute to the higher complexity of studying behavioral responses and its implications.

Real Life Examples

Psychological concepts such as associated learning are commonly presented in unconscious forms on a day to day basis. As a learned response, phobias are quite a common example of a conditioned response, where a negative experience, or multiple, can turn a neutral stimulus, like spiders, into a conditioned one- in this case, arachnophobia. In a school environment, classical conditioning could emerge in the form of bullying, where the school environment, the neutral stimulus, becomes a conditioned stimulus when repeatedly associated with fear or violence, so bullied students have the conditioned response to avoid schools. Advertising is also a prevalent example of classical conditioning for profit; marketers try to create a conditioned response for the consumer to buy certain products by continuously creating a link between a neutral stimulus, the product, and the unconditioned stimulus, which can be something inducing positive emotions such as music or graphics. Advertisers use this strategy quite often to influence others to gravitate towards their product or recognize their brand, so the idea of associated learning presents itself even when people don’t recognize it. So, overall, the Pavlov Dog Experiment was a major study among others that fed the larger concepts of classical conditioning and general behaviorism within the psychological field, analyzing human and animal behavior and its developments even to this day. So, if people ever question whether “Pavloving” one’s behavior is truly possible, it’s already been done.