so here's the secret to getting fit getting good grades and becoming a confident public speaker classical condition and no that's not some ancient Greek hair product but something discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900's Pavlov was collecting dog saliva when he discovered the dogs would salivate not only in response to food but in response to things associated with food in a series of experiments Pavlov's conditioned your dogs to salivate in response to neutral stimulus like a metronome a tongue or light bulb from these experiments we understand the process of classical conditioning to have the following parts so let's unpack what these parts are exactly by looking into Pavlov's experimental process first Pavlov repeatedly exposed the dogs to choose to rely together this is the unconditional stimulus because even without the conditioning process it induces a response it makes the dogs drool this is the conditional stimulus because it needs the help of the conditioning process to create a response nothing about a thousand Hertz tone is inherently delicious but with conditioning it induces the same response as the unconditional stimulus as the two stimuli are presented together repeatedly the dogs undergo a process known as acquisition where they learn to associate the tone with the food and the response of drooling becomes not only an unconditional response to food but a conditional response to the conditional stimulus all you need to do is play the beep to make the dogs rule with this model we can look at some common examples of this phenomenon for instance much of advertising relies on classical conditioning often ads are an effort to associate a company logo with some desirable stimuli be it cute sexy wholesome or so on for example if you show a logo and a cute animal that makes you feel happy after you undergo acquisition then the logo will also make you feel happy note that advertising also often makes use of higher-order conditioning in which a conditional stimulus is used as an unconditional stimulus for another conditional stimulus for instance a company logo can be associated with the new product so that the new product promised the same feelings associated with the logo so say that you often see a logo for a fitness company next to someone super beautiful and happy and let's say that when you see these ads you unconsciously compare yourself to the physical appearance of that person and maybe you feel a little inadequate every time you see the logo next to their new fitness drink in a store you may subconsciously remember feeling inadequate if you add campaigns and the packaging do their job well you might then decide to buy the drink even though it probably tastes super gross and won't actually make you beautiful or happy but hold on classical conditioning might actually be able to help you here to become more conventionally attractive and maybe even more happy and here's how a few times a week for about a month go to the gym and don't exercise just pick a few regular times a week and go there read some magazines a book do something that makes you feel relaxed have some fun use the gym is a place to unwind this way you're associated the conditional stimulus of the gym with the unconditional stimulus of relaxation and fun and going to the gym will create the conditional response of feeling happy and relaxed so you'll want to go there on a regular basis and you'll be able to keep up the consistent schedule required to achieve your workout goals after you have undergone such a regime you might be able to also take advantage here of higher order conditions to make yourself more happy since if you feel more happy when you go to the gym and you train when you go to the gym then you might eventually feel happy whenever you train wherever you train you can use a similar classical conditioning technique to improve your studying habits every time you study drink a peppermint tea and while you're drinking just study no distractions when we take a break once you finish the tea over time you'll learn to associate peppermint tea with focusing on your studies so that all you need to do to focus is to drink some tea you also might have heard a similar tip of having a specific place in your house or at the library where you consistently study and focus so that all you need to do to focus is to go to that location but be careful this technique is vulnerable to the process that comes after acquisition extinction if you start regularly checking social media in your study area or drinking tea whenever you want your conditional response will fade Pavlov observed this process in his dogs if you presented the conditional stimulus alone for several trials the conditional response would diminish but after extinction there is another process that might help you get your focus back Montana is recovering as observed in Pavlov's dogs if after some extended time the conditional stimulus is brought back then the conditional response will reappear but if you don't reinforce it with the unconditional stimulus then it will go through a second extinction period so get off your phone and keep studying what's notable about the spontaneous recovery process is that it shows that the conditioned learning is not removed forever in the extinction process rather the subject learns that the conditional stimulus no longer predicts the unconditional stimulus now but with some time it might come too predicted again you might also be able to use extinction to your advantage to cope with phobias as observed in several studies classical conditioning is one way to explain the emergence of phobias in studies where lab rats are conditioned to associate some neutral stimulus like a noise with some negative stimulus like a shock rats are observed to develop fearful behavior towards the neutral stimulus and towards the area in which the experiment was conducted they developed phobias of the noise and of the chamber alternately conditioning could cause a fear of public speaking say during a big career making or breaking presentation your slides went dead and you forgot the rest of your speech and you could do nothing this experience would probably make you associate the unconditional response of embarrassment shame and despair with the conditional stimulus of public speaking but remember extinction happens when the subject is exposed to the conditional stimulus without the unconditional stimulus so if you practice public speaking in front of a sympathetic audience if everything goes alright a few times in a row then that fear might go away in fact if it goes really well you might even develop a positive Association but it's likely that the best you can hope for is just a bit of stage fright but nothing that you can't deal with note that a phobia like a fear of public speaking probably have some degree of generalization generalization happens when stimuli that are similar to the conditional stimulus generates the conditional response for example Pavlov's dogs reproduce saliva in response to tones that were close in frequency to the trained tone that is the response was generalized to the surrounding tones and the more similar the stimulus the stronger the response after our hypothetical disaster presentation if you did develop a fear of public speaking then this conditioned behavior has undergone some generalizations you didn't previously have a bad experience at every podium and stage in existence only at your unlucky presentation but now a situation similar to that presentation are enough soprano full conditional response in other words your one bad experience on the podium has caused you to generalize that all public speaking situations will end in disaster in contrast to generalization discrimination in classical conditioning refers to when a conditioned response occurs only after a conditional stimulus not after a stimuli that are similar in this graph we can see that Pavlov's dogs do demonstrate some degree of discrimination although they respond tones that are very similar to the conditional stimulus they are able to discriminate these primary tones from tones that are not as similar to conditional stimulus and they probably wouldn't respond to just any noise of Pavlov plays that is their response would discriminate between different noises so if the failed presentation happened to someone with more past experiences of like speaking like a professional performer they might only develop a fear of speaking in that location or about that subject but be able to perform fine in other venues and on other topics in this case the conditional response shows a higher degree of discrimination since the conditional response only responds to the original conditional stimulus and not to similar stimuli finally there are a few more subtleties to unpack about classical conditioning will do so with the help of John Garcia's taste aversion studies Garcia first gave wraps a flavored solution then sometime later subjected them to radiation which induced nausea after only a single trial this nausea caused the rats to develop a taste aversion to the solution this happened even if the rats were irradiated a few hours after they consumed the solution this study demonstrated that classical conditioning can occur after only a single trial and even with long delay between the conditional stimulus and the unconditional stimulus but note that this study also demonstrated that these discoveries are not true of all instances of conditioning that is acquisition is easier and faster with some sets of stimuli than with others for instance food and illness are easier to associate with each other than noise and illness alternately whereas it might only take one bad experience to give use of your stage fright it'll probably take long term and repeated efforts to make some magic focus tea and to make you love going to the gym so get working [Music]