PSY-1010-Campbell - 12-1-2015

Eric Chantry
385-244-7222

Pavlovian Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a multifaceted, but simple concept. It's around us every
day but hard to identify without first knowing what to look for. Behaviorism is
defined as the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in
terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that
psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns(Oxford
Dictionaries, Psychology section) Taking thoughts and feelings out of the
equation, implies that behaviorism focuses our subconscious responses to
stimuli. This can make it hard to recognize, therefore making it hard to treat
or change.
Personal experience is something that impacted my understanding of
behaviorism. Richard F. Kitchener stated "Behaviorism has claimed to be the
only correct paradigm for psychology. How controversial this claim proves to
be depends, of course, upon how one interprets the behaviorist's claims
about the mind... in particular how one evaluates behaviorism will depend
largely upon the adequacy of the behaviorist view of 'behavior.(Jstor,
Behavior and Behaviorism, Richard F. Kitchener, para1) .
The idea that Behaviorism is the only correct standard or base of
psychology depends greatly on how we view the mind, and how we define

the word or idea of "behavior." I learned while going through personal

cognitive behavioral therapy with a counselor that behaviors can be an
automatic response, produced from a trigger. I had originally believed that
every choice I made was preceded by conscious thought. I learned through
therapy that often our subconscious mind reacts without our full
understanding. This happened because I was conditioned to have these
triggers from a young age through abuse that I experienced. I've had to learn
how to recondition my brain to make me feel safe and not allow those
triggers to control my life.
An example of traditional behaviorism is Pavlovian Conditioning.
Pavlovian Conditioning started from the idea that there are some things that
animals (or dogs in Pavlovs experiment) or humans do not need to learn, for
example whenever a dog sees food, it salivates. This reflex is hard wired into
the dogs brain and thus it is a unconditioned response. This is explained
well in a section of Susan Gareas paper entitled What Is the True Difference
Between Modern Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology? (What Is the True
Difference Between Modern Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology? Section,
para1)
Pavlov proved the existence of unconditioned responses through
placing a bowl of dog food in front of a dog, and measuring the amount of
saliva the dog secreted. But more than that, Pavlov discovered that a dog
can learn to associate other objects, people (such as a lab assistant) or

stimuli with food. Pavlov devoted his career to studying these types of
responses. In the study of behaviorism, the lab assistant that would be
known as a neutral stimulus its known as neutral stimulus due to the fact
that originally the lab assistant would produce no response from the dog. But
the dog soon learned to associate the lab assistant with the dog being able
to eat, thus producing a saliva response.
Pavlov went on to introduce the use of a bell as his neutral stimulus.
Pavlov started ringing a bell whenever he gave food to his dogs. This caused
the dog to learn to associate the bell with food, which would in turn cause
the dog to start to salivate. This caused the dogs to start to salivate every
time the bell was rung, whether there was food present or not, which goes to
show that dogs (or humans) can learn conditioned responses. This also
means that neutral stimulus can become Conditioned stimulus.
There is also an aspect that Pavlov discovered that he called
Spontaneous Recovery. Spontaneous Recovery is the return of a conditioned
response in a weaker form after a period of time. For example; Pavlov would
condition his dogs to associate the bell with food, then he would not ring the
bell for a few days, and then ring it again. He would notice that the dogs
would salivate, although not as much as when in the height of his
experiments.
Doing research on this topic of behaviorism, especially as I did
research into Pavlovs experiments (Pavlovian Conditioning section) made

me think of what I am conditioned to. The abuse I experienced as a child and

teenager is a more serious example. But I have also seen this in my day to
day life in small and simple ways. One thing I've noticed is what happens
around noon every day. I order lunch, not because I am hungry, but because
I learn that when I see 12:00 on my computer clock that its time for lunch
I also learned that when I am at my desk, when the phone rings, I normally
have a moment of anxiety, although I rarely get a call that I get legitimately
nervous over once I am on the call with them. Its just the anxiety of what
if?
Pavlov taught us that although there may be traits that are hard coded
into us, there are learned responses that we experience every day. Although
Pavlov may have been working with dogs, the principle is the same. We all
have become conditioned to expect certain things when specific actions or
events take place. Whether we are dogs, or humans we can see in our daily
lives that we have events that lead us to react a specific way every time that
event happens. In the words of J.B. Watson Psychology as the behaviorist
views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its
theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviorThe behaviorist, in
his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no
dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its
refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total
scheme of investigation. (Varieties of Behaviorism section, para2)

References
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/behaviourism
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27758893?
seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/pizzurro.html
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html