Create a 5 pages page paper that discusses learning and conditioning applied to psychology. Some of the founders and early practitioners of the learning and conditioning models are Ivan Pavlov, who first came upon the idea of the independent stimulus in provoking behavior in a subject, and Edward Thorndike, who came up with the Law of Effect and the ideas of rewards and punishments in regards to voluntary behavior in operant conditioning.

Learning and conditioning are vital parts of any human’s mental, physical, and emotional growth, which is one of the main reasons why I choose this as my topic. Without learning and conditioning, human beings – as well as other living creatures – would continue to make the same mistakes, over and over again. It is because of conditioning that we are able to adapt to certain situations and gain an understanding of why we react or do not react, in the ways that we do or do not.

Learning and conditioning apply to psychology in the sense that psychologists are able to observe and understand how their subjects learn in response to their given situations and environments. They can also research and discover other methods to use on their subjects to see how they respond to the situation. It allows psychologists to understand the workings of the subject’s mind and their ability to adapt to their environment.

Classical conditioning is an associative learning process by which the subject is presented with a neutral stimulus, or a conditioned stimulus, which is an event that does not normally call for a behavioral response and a stimulus that has some significance towards behavior or reaction, which is also called an unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response (Pavlov). One the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are repeatedly put together, they eventually become associated and the subject begins to produce a behavior towards that conditioned stimulus.

One of the most famous experiments in classical conditioning – the experiment that brought out the theories and methods of classical conditioning – is Pavlov’s dogs.