Читать книгу The Handy Psychology Answer Book - Lisa J. Cohen - Страница 93

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) was a Russian scientist who was originally interested in the digestive processes of animals. When trying to study how dogs digest food, he noticed the animals’ tendency to salivate at the sound or sight of their keeper shortly before feeding time. In other words, they salivated in the absence of actual food. Initially, this phenomenon was a nuisance, interfering with his study of digestion, but later it became the focus of his research. Pavlov’s studies provided the basis of the theory of classical conditioning, also known as associative or “Pavlovian” conditioning.

Where does emotion fit in?

Although strict behaviorists avoided all emotional terms, learning theory fully depends on emotion. In Thorndike’s Law of Effect and the theory of operant conditioning that followed, the likelihood that a behavior will be increased or decreased depends on its emotional impact. Behavior is increased when it elicits positive emotion (reward) and reduced when it elicits negative emotion (punishment). While it is more difficult to speak of emotions in animals, modern scientists assume that the simple emotional processes involved in learning theory—that is, forms of pleasure and pain—apply to both animals and humans.