Question

How has Pavlovian Conditioning altered your point of view about “Why we do what we do?” The question requires your own personal point of view, not information from the reading.

Answer 1

Pavlovian Conditioning:

Pavlovian Conditioning develops an association between two stimuli. As per this theory, The response that a Unconditional Stimulus (US) elicits is the Unconditioned response (UR); and Conditional Stimulus(CS) invokes a Conditional Response(CR).

The difference between Unconditional Stimulus (US) and Conditional Stimulus(CS) is that, US is invoked without any past training(For example: Salivating on the smell of food) and CS is invoked because of past experinces(For example, a person may cover his ears on the sight of thunder, because based on his past experiences, he knows that he will hear the loud thundering noise,next).

Personal View Point:

Pavlovian Conditioning has cleared my ideas about the everyday actions that we do, knowingly and un-knowingly.

For example, a new driver learns to drive, and he knows how to start a car, and stop a car. Later, he learns the significance of traffic lights. So, from that point, whenever a person sees a red light, he knows he has to stop. This is a Conditional Response.

In a similar manner, as soon as children see the teacher entering the class, they stand up, to greet the teacher. This is also an example of Conditional Response.

This also explains why we salivate on sight of certain food.

On the other hand, we blink when someone puffs air on our face.

This is an example of Unconditional Response.