Classical Conditioning
Sep. 26th, 2011 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potato_headANYBODY WANNA LEARN ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY?
Most of you have probably had a Psych 101 course at some point since most colleges require it. So you've probably heard of Pavlov and his dogs and classical conditioning. Here's a quick rundown: dogs salivate in response to food, Pavlov rings a bell before serving the food, dogs start salivating to bell. Note that salivation is not a response the animal can really control; the brain controls it, but not consciously.
Now allow me to explain classical conditioning more in-depth using an example from my own life!
So I have been stung three times in my life by bees. Regular honeybees. I'm not allergic, but it does REALLY HURT OMG and I do not like it all because sudden pain is also very, very upsetting to me like other sudden and intense stimuli are.
When I was very young, and stung for the first time, I had not yet learned what a bee really was. I mean, I sang the song about catching a bumblebee, I saw them on TV, but I hadn't really paired the visual of bees flying around with the stimulus of being stung. So basically, what happened was I sat on top of my covered sandbox (it was shaped like a giant turtle; of COURSE I had to ride it) which bees had taken residence in since we had covered it for fall. And I bounced on top of the turtle's shell and did not see anything wrong with the swarm of bees that came out to investigate wtf was riding their home. One finally got tangled in my hair and I tried (quite nicely I think) to untangle it, and that was my first sting.
The next day at school, a bee who apparently thought I had not learned my lesson well enough landed on my hand while I was just standing around and stung it. (Bees are assholes.)
After that I very quickly grew adept at identifying bees as opposed to other flying insects, and they made me nervous. In this case, the unconditioned stimulus was the pain of the bee sting, and the unconditioned response was anxiety and fear; it is natural for a human to experience significant distress over pain, it's not something we have to learn. The conditioned stimulus became the sight of bees, and the conditioned response was, again, anxiety and fear.
I also generalized this to certain other flying insects; namely flying ants (which I thought were a kind of bee) and hornets. I had prior experience with wasps which refused to sting me even when I accidentally caved their house in (these were burrowing wasps in Texas) so I'm still really not afraid of them. Hornets, on the other hand, are like bees on steroids. Aggressive killing machines. Ugh.
Anyways, this is a fairly common conditioned response in people. A lot of people will see what looks like a bee and duck away and freak out etc. It's true that they could be responding to the intellectual idea that a bee could sting me, but I've personally always found that people who HAVE been stung react much stronger than people who HAVE NOT, and additionally recognize bees and other stingers much more quickly. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyways.
So this is the part where it gets interesting. I work at DD's (for those of you outside the US or in the southern part of the US where s*bux is more common, it's a franchised coffee-and-donut shop with other things like breakfast sandwiches). At this time, I am working two-person closing shifts alternating between two girls who are not particularly strong, and thus it is easier for me to take out the trash; so I take the trash out to the dumpster every afternoon (start of shift) and night (end of shift).
Well, sometime between the night of one shift and the afternoon the next day, some hornets set up shop under the lip of the dumpster. I was the lucky one who found them! I wasn't even taking out the trash; I had swept the parking lot and decided to dump the dustpan in the dumpster instead of taking that gross crap inside. And as I open the lid, I realize hey those flies look dangerously like bees and then turn and start running.
The incident itself was really not very traumatizing. There were only four or five drones; they must have only just hatched - they didn't even have any venom. No, really. One latched onto my pinky and tried to sting me. He left a little puncture dot; no actual pain or sting. None of the others touched me, just followed me for a bit while I ran across the parking lot screaming like I was on fire.
However, they were near enough to bees (remember generalization?) that this experience became tied back to the stimulus of bee stings in my mind. So I now associate the dumpster with anxiety and fear, although it is significantly less than sighting an actual stinger. This is called higher-order conditioning. It's like a chain of conditioned stimuli back to the unconditioned stimulus. Dumpster -> sight of stinging insects -> pain of sting.
I also have a stronger conditioned response when the two stimuli of seeing the dumpster and seeing bees is paired; when around a dumpster, I tend to even generalize to all flying insects, and get very nervous about flies. Which there are a lot of around dumpsters. Unfortunate.
The dumpster itself is a rather imposing sight. I don't know if you've ever seen a large, rusted old dumpster that's caged off, but it's like approaching a hibernating dragon or something. So the visual of this dumpster had made some impression on me. This had caused me in the past to pair it with certain other stimuli; the feeling of cool air hitting me as I go outside to toss out trash at the end of the night; the feeling of the trash bags we use at work in my hands. Before the hornet incident, these stimuli were related, but didn't really mean anything to me, except lol going outside now to dumpster. Now, however, since the dumpster has become linked to pain for me, these other related stimuli also make me nervous. This is called sensory preconditioning. And this is DESPITE the fact that this incident happened in the afternoon, after I had been outside for some time, and when I was tossing out a dustpan of crap, not a bag. (And yes, stepping from warm air to cool, especially slightly damp air still does make me feel like I am crawling with bees).
This is still not at all unique. Humans are conditioned to have certain responses to new stimuli alllll the time; it's one of the basic ways we learn. Taste aversion is a big one a lot of people know pretty well; you get sick from eating a food once (or even after eating it, with no actual connection between the two) and you will probably dislike that food for a long time.
This dull and awkward story/lecture hybrid brought to you by me really needing a nap.
Most of you have probably had a Psych 101 course at some point since most colleges require it. So you've probably heard of Pavlov and his dogs and classical conditioning. Here's a quick rundown: dogs salivate in response to food, Pavlov rings a bell before serving the food, dogs start salivating to bell. Note that salivation is not a response the animal can really control; the brain controls it, but not consciously.
Now allow me to explain classical conditioning more in-depth using an example from my own life!
So I have been stung three times in my life by bees. Regular honeybees. I'm not allergic, but it does REALLY HURT OMG and I do not like it all because sudden pain is also very, very upsetting to me like other sudden and intense stimuli are.
When I was very young, and stung for the first time, I had not yet learned what a bee really was. I mean, I sang the song about catching a bumblebee, I saw them on TV, but I hadn't really paired the visual of bees flying around with the stimulus of being stung. So basically, what happened was I sat on top of my covered sandbox (it was shaped like a giant turtle; of COURSE I had to ride it) which bees had taken residence in since we had covered it for fall. And I bounced on top of the turtle's shell and did not see anything wrong with the swarm of bees that came out to investigate wtf was riding their home. One finally got tangled in my hair and I tried (quite nicely I think) to untangle it, and that was my first sting.
The next day at school, a bee who apparently thought I had not learned my lesson well enough landed on my hand while I was just standing around and stung it. (Bees are assholes.)
After that I very quickly grew adept at identifying bees as opposed to other flying insects, and they made me nervous. In this case, the unconditioned stimulus was the pain of the bee sting, and the unconditioned response was anxiety and fear; it is natural for a human to experience significant distress over pain, it's not something we have to learn. The conditioned stimulus became the sight of bees, and the conditioned response was, again, anxiety and fear.
I also generalized this to certain other flying insects; namely flying ants (which I thought were a kind of bee) and hornets. I had prior experience with wasps which refused to sting me even when I accidentally caved their house in (these were burrowing wasps in Texas) so I'm still really not afraid of them. Hornets, on the other hand, are like bees on steroids. Aggressive killing machines. Ugh.
Anyways, this is a fairly common conditioned response in people. A lot of people will see what looks like a bee and duck away and freak out etc. It's true that they could be responding to the intellectual idea that a bee could sting me, but I've personally always found that people who HAVE been stung react much stronger than people who HAVE NOT, and additionally recognize bees and other stingers much more quickly. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyways.
So this is the part where it gets interesting. I work at DD's (for those of you outside the US or in the southern part of the US where s*bux is more common, it's a franchised coffee-and-donut shop with other things like breakfast sandwiches). At this time, I am working two-person closing shifts alternating between two girls who are not particularly strong, and thus it is easier for me to take out the trash; so I take the trash out to the dumpster every afternoon (start of shift) and night (end of shift).
Well, sometime between the night of one shift and the afternoon the next day, some hornets set up shop under the lip of the dumpster. I was the lucky one who found them! I wasn't even taking out the trash; I had swept the parking lot and decided to dump the dustpan in the dumpster instead of taking that gross crap inside. And as I open the lid, I realize hey those flies look dangerously like bees and then turn and start running.
The incident itself was really not very traumatizing. There were only four or five drones; they must have only just hatched - they didn't even have any venom. No, really. One latched onto my pinky and tried to sting me. He left a little puncture dot; no actual pain or sting. None of the others touched me, just followed me for a bit while I ran across the parking lot screaming like I was on fire.
However, they were near enough to bees (remember generalization?) that this experience became tied back to the stimulus of bee stings in my mind. So I now associate the dumpster with anxiety and fear, although it is significantly less than sighting an actual stinger. This is called higher-order conditioning. It's like a chain of conditioned stimuli back to the unconditioned stimulus. Dumpster -> sight of stinging insects -> pain of sting.
I also have a stronger conditioned response when the two stimuli of seeing the dumpster and seeing bees is paired; when around a dumpster, I tend to even generalize to all flying insects, and get very nervous about flies. Which there are a lot of around dumpsters. Unfortunate.
The dumpster itself is a rather imposing sight. I don't know if you've ever seen a large, rusted old dumpster that's caged off, but it's like approaching a hibernating dragon or something. So the visual of this dumpster had made some impression on me. This had caused me in the past to pair it with certain other stimuli; the feeling of cool air hitting me as I go outside to toss out trash at the end of the night; the feeling of the trash bags we use at work in my hands. Before the hornet incident, these stimuli were related, but didn't really mean anything to me, except lol going outside now to dumpster. Now, however, since the dumpster has become linked to pain for me, these other related stimuli also make me nervous. This is called sensory preconditioning. And this is DESPITE the fact that this incident happened in the afternoon, after I had been outside for some time, and when I was tossing out a dustpan of crap, not a bag. (And yes, stepping from warm air to cool, especially slightly damp air still does make me feel like I am crawling with bees).
This is still not at all unique. Humans are conditioned to have certain responses to new stimuli alllll the time; it's one of the basic ways we learn. Taste aversion is a big one a lot of people know pretty well; you get sick from eating a food once (or even after eating it, with no actual connection between the two) and you will probably dislike that food for a long time.
This dull and awkward story/lecture hybrid brought to you by me really needing a nap.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-27 01:37 am (UTC)One time, I went out to the dumpster behind my apartment and opened it up to have some large rodent or rodent-like mammal jump out right past my freaking head. It was a bit too bizarre for me to actually be that scared by at the time, and I think it was trying to flee rather than to maul me, but I do wonder what's going to come out of there this time whenever I come to drop the trash off. O_o