M O D U L E 5.

1 181

signal for predicting the occurrence of the unconditioned stimulus. Humans and
other animals actively seek information that helps them make predictions about
important events in their environments. Conditioned stimuli are signals or cues that
organisms use to make these predictions. The more reliable the signal, the stronger
the conditioned response.
Recent evidence suggests that in humans, conscious awareness of the link be-
tween the two stimuli, the CS and the US, may be critical in learning conditioned
responses (Weidemann, Satkunarajah, & Lovibond, 2016). To acquire a conditioned
response, we may first need to attend to the relationship between the two stimuli.
Rescorla’s model has important survival implications. Dogs and other animals
may be more likely to survive if they learn to respond with salivation to cues that
food is present, because salivation prepares them to swallow food. Animals are also
more likely to survive if they learn to respond with fear (heightened bodily arousal)
to cues that reliably signal the presence of threatening stimuli. Consider an animal
that hears a sound or gets a whiff of an odor (a CS) previously associated with the
presence of a particular predator (a US). By responding quickly with heightened
arousal to such a stimulus, the animal is better prepared to take defensive action if
the predator appears. Thus, we can think of classical conditioning as a kind of built-
in early warning system.
Rescorla’s model also explains why you are likely to develop a fear of dentistry
more quickly if you experience pain during each dental visit than if you have pain
only every now and then. In other words, the more reliably the CS (a dental cue)
signals the occurrence of the US (pain), the stronger the conditioned response is
likely to be.

CONCept 5.8
Why It Matters: Examples of Classical Classical conditioning helps explain the de-
velopment of conditioned emotional reac-
Conditioning in Daily Life tions, such as conditioned fear responses.
Pavlov’s studies might merit only a footnote in the history of psychology if classi- CONCEPT LINK
cal conditioning were limited to the salivary responses of dogs. However, classical
Clinicians apply principles of
conditioning helps us explain such diverse behaviors as phobias, drug cravings, and
classical conditioning to explain the
taste aversions. John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, believed that Pavlov’s development of excessive fear reactions,
principles of conditioning could explain emotional responses in humans. In 1919, or phobias. See Module 13.2.
Watson set out with Rosalie Rayner, a student who was later to become his wife, to
prove that a fear response could be acquired through classical conditioning. After
taking a look at Watson and Rayner’s experiment, we consider other examples of
conditioning in humans.
Archives of the History of American Psychology – The University of Akron

Classical Conditioning of fear Responses

As their subject, Watson and Rayner selected an 11-month-old
boy whom they called Albert B., but who is better known in
the annals of psychology as Little Albert (Watson & Rayner,
1920). Albert had previously shown no fear of a white rat that
was placed near him and had even reached out to stroke the
animal (see ■ Figure 5.4). In the experimental procedure, the rat
was placed close to Albert, and as he reached for it, the experi-
menters banged a steel bar with a hammer just behind his head,
creating a loud gong. Watson believed that loud sounds natu-
rally make infants cringe and shudder with fear. Sure enough,
Albert showed signs of fear when the bar was struck—crying
and burying his face in the mattress. Watson and Rayner then
repeatedly paired the rat and the loud sound, which resulted in John Watson and Rosalie Rayner with
Albert developing a fear response to the sight of the rat alone. Little Albert

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182 Chapter 5 Learning

Before During After Stimulus

Conditioning Conditioning Conditioning Generalization

Child shows White rat (CS) is Child shows Child shows

no fear of paired with loud fear (CR) of fear reaction
white rat sound (US) that white rat alone (CR) to related
naturally evokes (CS) stimuli
fear response

fIGURE 5.4 The Conditioning of “Little Albert”

Such an acquired fear response is called a conditioned emotional reaction (CER). Later
experiments showed that Albert’s fear response had generalized to other furry stim-
uli, including a dog, a rabbit, and even a Santa Claus mask that Watson had worn.
Let us examine the Watson and Rayner study by applying what we know about
classical conditioning. Before conditioning, Albert showed no fear of the white rat;
it was a neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus (US) was the loud banging
sound, a stimulus that naturally elicits a fear response (UR) in young children.
Through repeated pairings of the white rat and the banging sound (US), the white
rat alone (CS) came to elicit a fear response (CR).
Though the Little Albert experiment is among the most famous studies in psy-
chology, it would not pass muster with the stricter ethical standards in place today.
Exposing a child to intense fear, even with the parents’ permission, fails to adhere
to the responsibility investigators have to safeguard the welfare of research partici-
pants. In addition, Watson and Rayner made no attempt to undo or extinguish Al-
bert’s fears, as ethical codes would now require, although they did discuss techniques
Advertising Archives

they might use to do so. We cannot say for sure what became of Little Albert, but in-
vestigators report that, sadly, the child they believe may have been Albert succumbed
to a childhood illness at the age of 6 (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009).
Excessive fears, or phobias, such as Albert’s fear of white rats or a person’s fear
There’s a common expression that “sex
of dentistry, can be acquired through classical conditioning. In one case example, a
sells.” How might you use the principles
34-year-old woman had been terrified of riding on elevators since a childhood in-
of classical conditioning to explain the
cident occurred in which she and her grandmother were trapped on an elevator for
role of sexual stimuli in advertising?
hours. For her, the single pairing of previously neutral stimuli (cues associated with
riding on elevators) and a traumatic experience was sufficient to produce an endur-
ing phobia (fear of elevators). In some cases, the original conditioning experiences
may be lost to memory, or they may have occurred even before language developed
(as in Albert’s case).
Early work on the conditioning of fear responses set the stage for the develop-
ment of a model of therapy called behavior therapy (discussed in Chapter 14), which
is the systematic application of the principles of learning to help people overcome
phobias and other problem behaviors.

Classical Conditioning in Advertising

conditioned emotional reaction John Watson also made his mark in the world of advertising, working as an execu-
(CER) An emotional response to a tive at a major advertising firm after leaving academia. Watson’s success in this field
particular stimulus acquired through rested on his application of the principles of classical conditioning. He suggested that
classical conditioning. manufacturers pair their products in print advertisements with emotionally arousing
phobias Excessive fears of particular cues, especially sexual stimuli. His advertising campaign for a popular toothpaste
objects or situations. of the time, Pebeco, featured a seductively dressed young woman smoking a cig-
behavior therapy A form of therapy that arette. In conditioning terms, the toothpaste represents the CS and the attractive
involves the systematic application of the young woman, the US. Today, thanks in part to Mr. Watson, we are bombarded with
principles of learning. advertisements and television commercials that pair products with sexual cues and

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 M O D U L E 5.1 183

other emotionally arousing stimuli. Advertisers hope their products will elicit sexual CONCept 5.9
arousal and positive emotions that will in turn spur sales. Can you think of commer- Feelings of nostalgia may be conditioned
cials on TV that pitch products with sexual cues? responses elicited by stimuli that were
associated with pleasant experiences in
the past.
Classical Conditioning of Positive Emotions
It’s not just negative emotions like fear that can be classically conditioned. Perhaps
you’ve had the experience of hearing a certain song on the radio and suddenly smil-
ing or feeling cheerful, or even experiencing a tinge of sexual arousal. Chances are the
song evoked past experiences associated with pleasant emotions or sexual arousal.
Similarly, feelings of nostalgia may be conditioned responses elicited by subtle cues

Mario Tama/Getty Images

in the environment that had come to be associated with pleasant experiences in the
past. These cues, perhaps just a whiff of perfume or the mist in the air on a spring
day, may induce nostalgic feelings.

Classical Conditioning of Drug Cravings

Drug cravings may be conditioned
People with chemical dependencies frequently encounter drug cravings, especially responses elicited by exposure to cues
when they undergo drug withdrawal or go “cold turkey.” Though cravings may have (conditioned stimuli) associated with
a physiological basis (they constitute part of the withdrawal syndrome for addictive drug-using behavior.
drugs), classical conditioning can also contribute to these strong desires. Cravings
may be elicited by cues (conditioned stimuli) in the environment associated with
prior drug use. People battling alcoholism may experience strong cravings for the
drug when they are exposed to drug-related conditioned stimuli, such as the sight of
a bottle of alcohol. Cravings may be elicited by conditioned stimuli long after with-
drawal symptoms have passed, such as cues associated with a subway station where
a drug abuser formerly bought drugs (see earlier The Brain Loves a Puzzle).
Consider also the person suffering from alcoholism who salivates at the very
sight of a liquor bottle. Salivating to the sound of a tone may be harmless enough,
but salivating when looking at a picture of a Scotch bottle in a magazine can be
dangerous to a person struggling with alcoholism. Not surprisingly, drug counselors
encourage recovering drug and alcohol abusers to avoid cues associated with their
former drug use patterns.

Classical Conditioning of Taste Aversions

The principles of classical conditioning can also be used to explain a conditioned
taste aversion, including my disgust for eggs (Garcia & Koelling, 2009; Limebeer
& Parker, 2006). Do you have an acquired taste aversion? Can you trace how it
developed?
Psychologist John Garcia was the first to demonstrate experimentally the role
of classical conditioning in the acquisition of taste aversions. Garcia and colleague
Bob Koelling noticed something unusual in the behavior of rats that had been
exposed to nausea-inducing radiation. The rats developed an aversion or “condi-
tioned nausea” to flavored water sweetened with saccharine when the water was
paired with the nausea-producing radiation (Garcia & Koelling, 1966). In classical
conditioning terms, the radiation was the US; the nausea it produced was the UR; CONCept 5.10
the flavored water was the CS; and the aversion (nausea) the CS elicited on its own Drug cravings and taste aversions may be
was the CR. acquired through classical conditioning.
In related work, Garcia demonstrated that aversion to particular foods could
be classically conditioned by giving rats a nausea-inducing drug soon after they
ate the foods (Garcia & Koelling, 1971). Moreover, taste aversions were acquired
even when the CS (the taste of the food) was presented a few hours before the pre-
sentation of the US (the nausea-inducing stimulus) (Domjan, 2005). This discovery conditioned taste aversion An aversion
shocked Garcia’s experimental colleagues, who believed that classical conditioning to a particular food or beverage acquired
could occur only when the CS is followed almost immediately by the US. Moreover, through classical conditioning.

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184 Chapter 5 Learning

In a field experiment by psychologist

John Garcia (shown here), investigators
left sheep carcasses on the range after
injecting them with a nausea-producing
chemical. After eating meat from these
carcasses and becoming sickened,
coyotes developed a conditioned taste
aversion to sheep meat.

Thomas Kitchin

John Garcia
Garcia and his team were able to demonstrate that a conditioned taste aversion
could be acquired on the basis of a single pairing of the flavor of a food or drink with
a nausea-inducing stimulus.
Like other forms of classical conditioning, conditioned taste aversions have clear
survival benefits. Our ancestors lived without benefit of refrigeration or preserva-
tives. Acquiring an aversion to foods whose rancid smells and tastes sickened them
would have helped them avoid such foods in the future. Similarly for us, learning to
become averse to tastes and aromas of foods that sicken us prompts us to avoid such
foods in the future.
In a classic study that literally applied principles of classical conditioning on
the open range, John Garcia and his colleagues came up with an ingenious way to
help sheep ranchers protect their sheep from coyotes (Gustavson & Garcia, 1974;
Gustavson et al., 1974). At the time of the study, free-ranging coyotes were killing
thousands of sheep, and ranchers seeking to protect their flocks were killing so many
coyotes that their survival as a species was endangered. It was therefore important to
find a way of stopping the coyotes’ destructive behavior without killing them. As an
experiment, the researchers injected sheep carcasses with a poison that would sicken
but not kill the coyotes and scattered the carcasses over the range. Not only did
sheep killings drop, but some coyotes also developed such an aversion to the taste of
the sheep meat that they ran away just at the sight or smell of sheep.

Conditioning the Immune System

CONCept 5.11 In a landmark study, Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen (1982) showed that classical
Investigators have found that even conditioning even extends to the workings of the immune system. The immune sys-
immune system responses can be tem protects the body from disease-causing organisms. The researchers had labora-
classically conditioned. tory rats ingest saccharin-sweetened water (CS) while at the same time giving them
a drug (US) that suppressed immune system responses (UR). After several pairings of
the CS and US, immune suppression (CR) occurred when the rats drank the sweet-
ened water alone (CS).
Conditioned immune suppression can be made to occur in response to other con-
ditioned stimuli, such as odors and sounds, as well as in humans (Kusnecov, 2001;
Pacheco-Lopez et al., 2005). For example, a group of healthy people was given an
immune system The body’s system of immune-suppressant drug as an unconditioned stimulus, which was paired with a
defense against disease. distinctively flavored drink as a conditioned stimulus during four separate sessions

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