Real-World Applications of Classical Conditioning

Conditioning for Nausea

How does classical conditioning work in the real world? Consider the case of Moisha, who was diagnosed with cancer. When she received her first chemotherapy treatment, she vomited shortly after the chemicals were injected. In fact, on every trip to the doctor for chemotherapy treatment shortly after the drugs were injected, she vomited. Moisha’s treatment was a success and her cancer went into remission. Now, when she visits her oncologist’s office every 6 months for a check-up, she becomes nauseous.

In this case, the chemotherapy drugs are the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), nausea (and vomiting) is the unconditioned response (UCR), the doctor’s office is the conditioned stimulus (CS) after being paired with the UCS, and nausea is the conditioned response (CR).

Second-Order Conditioning

Consider another example of classical conditioning. Let’s say you have a cat named Tiger, who is quite spoiled. You keep her food in a separate cabinet, and you also have a special electric can opener that you use only to open cans of cat food. For every meal, Tiger hears the distinctive sound of the electric can opener (“zzhzhz”) and then gets her food. Tiger quickly learns that when she hears “zzhzhz” she is about to get fed. What do you think Tiger does when she hears the electric can opener? She will likely get excited and run to where you are preparing her food. This is an example of classical conditioning. In this case, what are the UCS, CS, UCR, and CR?

What if the cabinet holding Tiger’s food becomes squeaky? In that case, Tiger hears “squeak” (the cabinet), “zzhzhz” (the electric can opener), and then she gets her food. Tiger will learn to get excited when she hears the “squeak” of the cabinet. Pairing a new neutral stimulus (“squeak”) with the conditioned stimulus (“zzhzhz”) is called higher-order conditioning, or second-order conditioning. This means you are using the conditioned stimulus of the can opener to condition another stimulus: the squeaky cabinet. It is hard to achieve anything above second-order conditioning. For example, if you ring a bell, open the cabinet (“squeak”), use the can opener (“zzhzhz”), and then feed Tiger, Tiger will likely never get excited when hearing the bell alone.

higher-order conditioning

Also called second-order conditioning, this is when a conditioned stimulus is used to condition a neutral stimulus. In effect, this is adding one more level to the conditioning.

Conditioned Stingray

There is a place off of the coast of the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean where you can swim with and feed southern stingrays. How did people train the normally solitary stingray to gather in one place to be fed? It started about 40 years ago, when fishermen began to clean fish and conch at a particular sandbar near a barrier reef, and large numbers of stingrays would swim in to eat what the fishermen threw into the water; this continued for years. By the late 1980s, word of the large group of stingrays spread among scuba divers, who then started feeding them by hand. Over time, the southern stingrays in the area were classically conditioned much like Pavlov’s dogs. Over time, the food (unconditioned stimulus) and feeding behaviors (unconditioned response) were paired with the boat engines of the human visitors! When the stingrays hear the sound of a boat engine (a neutral stimulus that becomes a conditioned stimulus), they know that they will get to eat (conditioned response).

Conditioned to Your Alarm

Another example you are probably very familiar with involves your alarm clock. If you’re like most people, waking up early usually makes you unhappy. In this case, waking up early (UCS) produces a natural sensation of grumpiness (UCR). Rather than waking up early on your own, though, you likely have an alarm clock that plays a tone to wake you. Before setting your alarm to that particular tone, let’s imagine you had neutral feelings about it (i.e., the tone had no prior meaning for you). However, now that you use it to wake up every morning, you psychologically “pair” that tone (CS) with your feelings of grumpiness in the morning (UCR). After enough pairings, this tone (CS) will automatically produce your natural response of grumpiness (CR). Thus, this linkage between the unconditioned stimulus (UCS; waking up early) and the conditioned stimulus (CS; the tone) is so strong that the unconditioned response (UCR; being grumpy) will become a conditioned response (CR; e.g., hearing the tone at any point in the day—whether waking up or walking down the street—will make you grumpy). Modern studies of classical conditioning use a very wide range of unconditioned and conditioned stimuli and measure a wide range of conditioned responses.

Advertising executives are pros at applying the principles of associative learning. Think about the car commercials you have seen on television. Many of them feature an attractive model. By associating the model with the car being advertised, you come to see the car as being desirable (Cialdini, 2008). You may be asking yourself, does this advertising technique actually work? According to Cialdini (2008), men who viewed a car commercial that included an attractive model later rated the car as being faster, more appealing, and better designed than men who viewed an advertisement for the same car minus the model.
Have you ever noticed how quickly advertisers cancel contracts with a famous athlete following a scandal? As far as the advertiser is concerned, that athlete is no longer associated with positive feelings; therefore, the athlete cannot be used as an unconditioned stimulus to condition the public to associate positive feelings (the unconditioned response) with their product (the conditioned stimulus).Now that you are aware of how associative learning works, see if you can find examples of these types of advertisements on television, in magazines, or on the Internet.