CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Even before a Doctor injects the needle we start shouting with pain or starts shivering. Also when we just see or hear about our favorite sweet dish we start salivating. All this happens due to a Psychological Phenomenon known as CLASSICAL CONDITIONING. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING is also known as PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING. Classical Conditioning is defined as AUTOMATIC RESPONSE TO A SITUATION BUILT UP THROUGH REPEATED EXPOSURE.



Russian Psychologist, IVAN PAVLOV was the first to explain CLASSICAL CONDITIONING by performing an experiment on hungry dog’s .In his experiment his team used to ring a bell & immediately after ringing the bell, Ivan Pavlov applied meat paste on the tongue of hungry salivating dogs. He repeated the procedure of ringing bell & applying meat paste several times as a result of which after few repetitions the dogs start salivating when they heard the sound of ringing bell even though the dogs were not hungry.



When Psychologist Ivan Pavlov started his experiment the dogs salivated when they were hungry but later the dogs started salivating when they heard the sound of the bell . This happened because the dogs associated the sound of bell with the application of meat paste on the tongue. Similarly most of us with repeated past experiences have associated the injection with pain therefore even before the doctor injects needle we start screaming or shivering.