How and what is conditioning?
Psychology has drastically evolved to be a very wide known career that is very interesting to learn. Since the beginning psychology was traced to the 1800’s introduced in Germany. I was amazed to learn about the principle of conditioning in psychology. I chose this topic because I have always had interest on learning how the mind works and how can the mind be tricked to do things that regularly don’t happen. According to the journal of “Communitive & Integrative Biology” Conditioning is a form of making someone or something react to a specific sound or action by either rewarding the subject or punish them when the action is or is not done by the subject. There two types of conditioning, there is classical conditioning and operant conditioning these two different principles of conditioning can have drastic effects in our lives.
First, I would like to begin with the history of psychology. According to Nadine Weidman an editor to a book called “History of Psychology” it was first seen in Leipzig Germany in 1879. The first laboratory dedicated to only psychology was founded by Wilhelm Wundt. Psychology was not as it is today. Many experiments were very inhuman and was seen as witchcraft back in the olden days. It wasn’t till until 1879 when psychology became its own thing and legitimized to be its own field. With the many experiments that were being performed and though very cruel it helped with the understanding of the human mind and how it would be conditioned to test subjects to react to a certain thing. For instance, the experiment done by Palov’s, of a dog and a bell, whenever the bell was rung the dog would beginning to salivate because it was conditioned to think that food was going to be given to him and so he would salivate. This would also be known as classical conditioning that invokes the dog to unconsciously react to a sound that would normally not cause them to react to anything to now provoke the dog to react. I find this very exciting, because there are many possibilities that open up when being able to condition a response.
According to the journal “Communitive & Integrative Biology” classical conditioning can be defined as, “a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired a response which is at first elicited by the stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone”. (5) Which in practice means that classical condition can be affiliated with a phobia, anger, and nausea. For example, someone who is scare to a spider the classical condition is that the person will react whenever they see a spider. This is example is a phobia which can also be anything a person fears that causes them to react a certain way in this case fear. Classical conditioning can be found in almost everyone that being a phobia that they suffer or a trauma with a specific thing they’ve experienced. In short, this can mean that classical conditioning can be practiced on anyone without them noticing because, not everyone knows what they fear most of the time things just come in as a surprise. Just know that it classical conditioning making its play.
In the article “History of Psychology” examples of many years ago can be found that used operant conditioning for many of the slaves of the Egyptians and for the Pharos as well. The slaves were treated with punishment conditioning that would invoke fear and so they would do what was instructed. In definition Operant conditioning; “is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior”. (7) In practice this can be used in a way in which the real-world functions for instance, jobs pay workers to complete a task money is the reward for them completing the task. It’s always good though this can be used in a very conative way like violence and punishment to make someone do something. Bullying can be a form of operant conditioning because the person being bullied is conditioned to do what the bully wants in order to avoid punishment. The person loses control of the situation due to the operant condition that has been done to him/her. Realistically speaking operant conditioning has been done to everyone in their lifetime from parents forcing their child to take piano lessons to peer pressure from their friends.
I found this to be very interesting and I decided chose it because, it is good to know when conditioning is being used in the real world. Many examples can be found anywhere due to it being very common and many people don’t really know about it. In the readings that I found it explicitly says that conditioning has been happening since the beginning of human existence. The most common use of conditioning is used on animals. Humans train animals to do many things from tricks to attacks that can be used to train an animal. It is very interesting how someone or something can be trained to react to something that doesn’t even have to be related to the reaction and invoke their mind to react a certain way that does what was conditioned to do. This very dependent of the mind according to Weidman, she says that in order to understand the world one must understand the mind and how it to works to be able to change it and make it react in a whole different way. In many ways she is correct, but the mind is not the only factor so many psychologists have gone beyond that have done some horrific things but all in the name of science. Allowing our self to understand helps with further understanding on why conditioning is every body’s lives.
In conclusion, there are many different ways conditioning has had an effect in our lives.
psychology has evolved to be a widely known form of testing human behavior and how the mind works. It has been around for centuries, but it did not become a legit career and respected until the late 1800’s in Germany. The principles that most interested me were the principles of classical conditioning and operant conditioning that focus on how someone or something reacts to a certain sound smell caused by something that invokes fear or stimulates the mind to react a certain way. The journal that I found called “Communitive & Integrative Biology” explains the definitions of the two conditioning methods and goes in depth on how it works. In context the article “History of Psychology” Demonstrated the contextual order of the history of psychology and how it came to be. I learned a lot about how the mind can be tested and used in a different way that it was not intended. Furthermore, in the articles the term to describe the brain was a computer and was heavily repeated that really made a good analogy to help understand the complexity of how the brain functions. I learned a lot from this respective career and I’m happy to know a little bit more about the human brain.
