hello everybody welcome back knowing what you know about classical conditioning it should be no surprise that some in society might try to use classical conditioning to manipulate our emotions so towards certain things so we may be classically conditioned to have positive emotions towards certain objects symbols events places and even people politicians and companies who are trying to sell us their products will use classical conditionings to hopefully condition positive emotions within us to their products or to their policies or to issues that they support classical conditioning for example when it comes to the flag when you see an american flag you may feel a sense of pride or reverence right so the flag is like a sacred symbol of america so when you see it it elicits certain feelings you should know that a flag is a conditioned stimulus we do not have a natural reaction to the flag right so how do we get this reaction it was through classical conditioning the unconditioned stimulus is music so usually when you see the american flag uh you might be at a baseball game right and they'll say everybody turn to the flag put your right hand over your heart right so then you look at the flag right which is a neutral stimulus and then you hear uh the national anthem right so this national anthem is the unconditioned symbols and it is a stirring music that elicits these emotions within us right so flag plus music leads to an unconditioned response which is reverence or pride and eventually after repeated pairings of pride of flag plus music we eventually began to have these emotions elicited when we see the flag by itself so this is how we are classically conditioned to have certain emotions toward a symbol such as the flag american flag in addition higher order conditioning is used to hopefully transfer the positive emotions that we have towards the flag to people who literally wear the flag under under the pill so if you look at many politicians they have a flag that is fixed to their uh to their um suit and the reason why is because they're hoping they're hoping that the positive emotions you have to the flag will eventually be transferred to him or her right so that's an example of higher order conditioning you have some politicians they will maybe pose in front of the flag so you might see hillary clinton which might be a neutral stimulus for some people and after you see hillary clinton then you see the flag and back of her which is an unconditioned stimulus and hopefully hillary clinton might think that over time by associating herself with the flag that the reference you have towards the flag will be transferred to her via higher order classical conditioning you might even have some politicians even blatantly or overtly try to associate with themselves with the flag such as donald trump in this particular picture right so that is going a little bit overboard but but nonetheless the um the effect donald trump is trying to uh trying to accomplish in this photograph is a transference of your love and reference for the flag transferred to him by literally hugging the flag in addition to politicians who use classical conditioning advertisers also use classical conditioning in their ads to try to manipulate our feelings toward their product hopefully resulting in the higher sales let's take for example um a car advertisement so when you think of cars you might think an advertiser should you know list the details of the product in order to sell the product for example they might say they might talk about miles per gallon they might talk about safety they might talk about steering they might talk about awards they might talk about all these boring details about the car but no no no no no usually car advertisers don't focus on the boring details of their cars even though they might be truly awesome so what they do instead an easier way to elicit positive emotions for the product is to pair their product with a sexy model right so you'll see the car and then you'll see a sexy model right the sexy model is an unconditioned stimulus that elicits yearning or passion okay so by repeated pairing of the product in this case a car plus sexy model advertisers are hoping that the yearning and passion that you have towards the model is then transferred to the product itself so next time you go into public you happen to see that car it's gonna hopefully automatically elicit a conditioned response which is yearning and passion obviously having yearning and passion towards a product doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to buy the product especially if it's really expensive but nonetheless it could lead to an increase in sales which can lead to increase in profits for that company so hopefully it works enough where it will result in in a increase in sales over time like look at carl's jr salad right so what they're gonna do is they're gonna pair their salad up with a sexy person what does a salad have to do with sex or what does yogurt have to do with sex absolutely nothing right but by pairing their product with a sexy person the sexy person acts as a unconditioned stimulus and the yearning and passion you have for that sexy person will hopefully then be transferred to the product itself so that next time you see a salad from carl's jr or next time you see a certain brand of yogurt hopefully that that classically conditioned response that you have of yearning will hopefully transfer into sales of actual sales for the product so this is how classical conditioning is used in our everyday lives by such people as politicians and companies who want to sell us things so here is um kind of a a diagram showing how classical conditioning is used in a car ad the sexy model is unconditioned seamless passion is unconditional response the car is a condition seamless we don't have a natural reaction to a car right so therefore it's a conditioned stimulus it's initially neutral so in advertising we see a car followed by a sexy person the sexy person is an unconditioned stimulus which elicits a unconditioned response after repeated pairings of seeing that car advertisement of car plus sexy person eventually the car company hopes that seeing the car in and of itself will be enough to elicit a conditioned response in this case passion here's another example of what i talked about earlier higher order conditioning is also used by politicians when they use a lapel pin flag so as you know flag is initially a conditioned stimulus because we have a neutral reaction to a symbol such as a flag but we see the flag followed by an unconditioned stimulus stirring music which elicits unconditioned response such as pride right or right so eventually after repeated pairings of flag plus music the flag in and of itself will be enough to hopefully elicit pride right so what politicians do is then they'll begin to pair themselves up with the flag either by posing in front of it or by literally wearing a flag pin on their lapel right so politician plus flag equals yearning i'm not yearning equals pride right and so this is in this case a conditional stimulus the flag is illicitly a conditioned response right pride after repeated pairings of politician press plus flag eventually the politician hopes that the pride that's elicited by the flag is elicited by the politician himself or herself right so this would be higher order conditioning so you see this in society especially in politics in addition to positive emotions being classically conditioned negative emotions can also be deliberately classically conditioned by by people who want to manipulate us but in general for the most part advertisers and politicians they want to stick with positive emotions uh nonetheless classically conditioned uh negative emotions such as fear can also occur in society research suggests we can learn fear through association or through classical conditioning so not only positive emotions can be can be taught or classic condition but so too can negative emotions like fear or hate one thing to keep in mind is that humans are biologically primed to learn some fears and taste more easily than other so for example it is much easier to classically condition fear to snakes and spiders than it is to classically condition humans to puppy dogs and bunny rabbits so we're just naturally more susceptible to learning fear to to to animals that can potentially harm us like snakes and spiders in addition uh we are much more susceptible we are much more easily classically conditioned to say um to nas to feel nauseous to bitter or sour taste than say sweet taste right so we can classically condition nauseousness and it's much more easier to classically condition nauseousness to things that are bitter or sour versus sweet like a candy apple so not all stimuli are equally able to be learned at the same rate through classical conditioning irrational fears that interfere with normal life in other words phobias can also be learned via conditioning classical conditioning to demonstrate how phobias are acquired or could be acquired watson and raynor in 1920 deliberately established a rat phobia in an 11 month year old boy named albert aka little albert so they use a loud noise as the unconditioned stimulus so watson rainer conditioned little albert to be afraid of white white rats by pairing the neutral stimulus rats with an unconditioned stimulus a loud noise so rats are a um are a neutral stimulus because babies or humans we're not naturally born with if we are rats we just look at rats and we're like oh whatever right especially when you're a baby and you don't have any negative concepts associated with rats so what happened in this experiment was unconditioned simus was a loud noise what watson and rayner would do was they would go behind little albert right and so little albert didn't know what was happening and then they get a metal pole and they would strike the hammer to the mellow pole right and this would startle albert and make albert cry so the unconditioned stimulus was the loud noise and which elicited a unconditioned response cry and fear from little albert what they did then was they would say here albert look at this little rat you know and albert would look at the rat and come just like what is that and then after they presented albert with the rat then they'd strike that middle bar with the hammer so the unconditioned stimulus would once again elicit a unconditioned response in this case fear from little albert eventually after multiple pairings of rat plus loud noise little albert developed a phobia of rats so what happened was after repeated pairings they would eventually get to the point where they showed rap the shield rat they would show little albert the rat and just the sight of the the rat in and of itself would cause little albert to freak out right he developed a a very irrational a very extreme and intense fear of white rats as a result of classical conditioning so he developed a phobia what they also found is within days albert was not only afraid of rats his fear had generalized to other furry objects so what uh watson and rayner did was watson wore a santa claus beard you know a little white furry beard on his face a fake one and they found that when lila albert saw the white santa claus beard worn by watson this would be enough to make him freak out right have a phobic response right so stimulus generalization occurred they also presented little albert with some white cotton balls and when the albert saw the white cotton balls he began to freak out right he had a phobic response and so once again this is another example of stimulus generalization occurring so any stimuli in the environment that is similar to the conditioned stimulus right the the white rat can potentially also elicit the condition response in this case a phobic fearful response so classical conditioning has also been used in what's called gay reparative therapy and class uh let me tell you this now is that when it comes to quote-unquote gay reparative therapy there is zero evidence that it can quote unquote cure gay people first of all how can you cure somebody who's not sick okay so that being said is with the knowledge of classical conditioning what some therapists tried to do was they tried to quote unquote cure the gayness other people so what they would do is they would show them pictures uh that were homosexual in nature right uh maybe if it was a guy maybe they might show him pictures of other naked guys or whatever i don't know what the what it was but they showed them pictures right and when the guy began to have a reaction right then david followed it up immediately with a shock right so gay picture plus shock gay picture was shock gay picture plus shock so eventually it was hoped that this would um be enough to make people no longer attracted to gay to people of their own gender that it could quote unquote cure against uh what they found is that basically it didn't work um the only thing gay reparative therapy did was it made gay people hate themselves more because basically if you're in therapy for being gay you're being told that there's something wrong with you right so being in therapy was what was more damaging to the person than being gay you know being gay had no damage um the the the damage that a person had from being gay was not from being gay it was from being discriminated from in society you know people teasing you or maybe people making you feel uh like you're lesser than human than the human or maybe being discriminated on the job so those are the types of things that cause gay people they have mental anguish it's not being gay in and of itself uh in addition this this gay reparative therapy that told gay people there was something wrong with them also did not help so it did not quote unquote do any um quote-unquote curing in terms of a person being gay it just made it worse so this didn't work um in fact there is a lot of people who have underwent gay reparative therapy and they said that they were basically harmed by anti-gay therapy right just just the message that therapy sent told them that there was something wrong with them so this taught some people that they uh self-hatred you know you know i'm gay there's something wrong with me i hate myself because i'm not straight so this causes some people a lot of mental anguish and that basically is is not therapy right it it cause more pain than than any help in reality class they may also tell you that there is no documented case of a gay person being cured of being gay um basically when it comes to gayness a gay person might learn to live a straight life for example but you know what they're still gay right so basically they're taught to live a lie but on the inside they haven't changed um let me ask you a question do you think that you could i mean i'm gonna assume that you're straight because uh the vast majority of people are straight not the vast but the majority of people are straight so uh just for argument sake do you think i could cure you of your straightness that sounds ridiculous right i mean you're like wtf i mean what do you mean cure me of my straightness that's dumb no amount of of shock is gonna cause me to be gay right that's what you might be thinking uh as a straight person well the same logic applies to gay people no amount of shock is going to quote unquote cure a gay person of being gay because that's who they are that's how they're born and you're not going to change it so accept him um yeah so gayness is not a choice and gayness is also it is not a sickness it's just how a person was born basically and uh truthfully uh in terms of science the evidence is not definitive that the person is being is born gay however there is a lot of evidence that suggests that is the case but um of course i also have to admit that it's not conclusive okay so knowing that gay repair to therapy does not work and also knowing that there's uh that gay reparative therapy is actually damaging to gay people there have been many states who actually outlawed this practice of so-called gay reparative therapy so here's another example of classical conditioning in real life so for some of you the unconditional stimulus might be the medicine that is injected to you right so the medicine right injection of medicine the unconditioned stimulus can lead to an unconditioned response um nauseousness so what happens is you go to the clinic so you see a clinic and then you get the injection and then you feel nauseous right so unconditional stimus can lead to a condition response eventually after repeated pairings of going to the stimulus plus receiving a shot eventually seeing the clinic itself or even just thinking about the click can elicit a conditioned response response of nauseousness so for me i have a classically conditioned response to a clinic or a hospital to me it is sadness because um every time i've been to a hospital it's always been for bad reasons you know somebody has cancer or somebody is dying somebody is sick somebody broke their arm you know it's always bad sad reasons so i see a hospital and then i am exposed to somebody who is going through a traumatic event such as dying of cancer and that makes me sad and eventually after repeated pairings of hospital plus cancer victim hospital plus cancer victim lisa sadness eventually just thinking about a hospital makes me sad by itself so even to this day i avoid certain streets because i know there's a hospital on them and i want to avoid the sadness that seeing those hospitals elicit within me because of classical conditioning in addition classical conditioning can also result in prejudice there are many many different reasons why people are prejudiced okay yeah so this is just one of many different explanations so this might apply in some situations but probably not in most so maybe just a select few a few examples this will actually apply um so classical conditioning has been used to explain some prejudice in unfamiliar situations for example in an affluent person being in the ghetto can cause fear and anxiety right and maybe even anger like why do i have to be here so being in the ghetto can elicit a lot of negative emotions if you're not used to being in the ghetto so somebody who lives in beverly hills right and then they have to come to carson where i live for whatever reason and unfortunately class i i do not live with a nice part of carson which is fine because i can afford where i live so that's that's the main thing is i can afford where i am okay but i don't live in a nice part of carson so you have a person from beverly hills coming to the park carson where i live which is a little bit less nice so you might have a person from beverly hills thinking feeling anxiety or fear simply because it's an unfamiliar situation they don't know what to expect you know they heard about the gangs they heard about the crime so then they're they're on edge um so also imagine that this person from beverly hills initially has a neutral feeling towards people that live in carson right so she never or he never met a person people from carson so uh very neutral but in order to get the carson this person from beverly hills drives a carson gets out of the car sees carson people and then now they're in the middle of carson which is a very unfamiliar stressful situation because they're just not familiar with it so this unfamiliar situation right is an unconditioned stimulus which can lead to an unconditioned response in this case anxiety fear resentment anger why am i here after repeated pairings of seeing carson people then being in carson eventually is maybe seeing people incarcerating in and of themselves can elicit these negative feelings of anger resentment and fear and now this person has developed a prejudice towards carson people so in addition stimulus generalization can occur now this person feels anger resentment and fear not just with carson people with but with anybody who looks like they could be from carson right so now this person has to develop a more generalized prejudice towards people who they're not who he or she is not familiar with but let me also tell you class that the opposite can also occur um so i'm from carson well actually i live in carson i'm not from carson but let's say okay i'm from carson and i go to beverly hills okay and to me beverly hills would be would be an unfamiliar situation because you know something i see on tv and i think they might discriminate against me maybe because i don't look like you know an affluent person so i go to beverly hills it's kind of stressful to me because i don't know what to expect so i fear fear and anxiety so maybe uh i go to beverly hills i get out of my car i see rich people okay and then i walk in around beverly hills and then that situation makes me feel anxious so after repeated pairings i've seen affluent people in beverly hills plus being in beverly hills and feeling anxious and nervous eventually my anxiety and nervousness might transfer the people themselves so my point is that when it comes to prejudice and classical conditioning it's just not affluent people um disliking or developing prejudice towards less affluent people it can also go both ways right it can affect everybody equally all right so that's it for this zoom video in our next one we are going to cover operant conditioning i'll see you there