CLASSICAL CONDITIONING BY IVAN PAVLOV

Name

Date
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

This is a type of conditioning in which an individual respond to some stimulant that

would not ordinarily produce such response.

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist interested in studying how digestion works in

mammals.

He observed and recorded information about dogs and their digestive system and

process. He started to study what triggers dogs to salivate. it should have been an

easy study; mammals produce saliva to help them break down food, so the dogs

should have simply began drooling when presented with food. But what Pavlov

discovered that when he observed the dog was that drooling had a much more far

reaching effect than he thought. this grew as an experiment to teach dogs to salivate

in response to ringing of the bell.

When Pavlov presented the dog with a piece of meat the dog exhibited a

noticeable increase in salivation. when he withheld the presentation of meat and

merely rang the bell the dog did not salivate.

He proceeded to link the meat and the ringing of the bell and after repeatedly

ringing the bell and giving back the food, the dog began to salivate

After some time, the dog would salivate at the sound of the bell even if no food was

offered

In effect the dog had learnt to respond to salivate to the bell. He said that the dogs

demonstrated classical conditioning. He summed up as follows:

There is a neutral stimulus the bell, which by itself will not produce a

response. There is a non-neutral or unconditioned stimulus; the food which will

produce an unconditioned response; salivation.

In an organization setting e.g. at one manufacturing plant, every time the top

executives from the head office were scheduled to visit a unit, the plant management

would clean up the administration office and wash the windows. This went for years,

eventually employees would turn on their best behaviours in those instances when the

cleaning was not ordered by the top executives.