It’s Not Just About Salivating Dogs Pavlov’s Background
All around the world Pavlov’s name and work is often brought about, even in non-psychology focused places, whether it be in TV shows, classic music or casual conversation. Pavlov was originally a russian Physiologist focused more on the scientific based things, when he discovered something in a totally unfamiliar area when doing an experiment on digestive systems. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in science for his digestive system research, but he also discovered the classical conditioning theory. Psychology was considered to be less than a true science in the late 1800’s, but Pavlov still decided to make the extremely risky career change and go further into his discovery. And now because of it, psychology is what it is today and grew the curiosity in the psychology community of further possibilities of the human mind.
The Experiment
Pavlov’s experiment originally started out studying the role of salivation on digestion. They first redirected the dogs salivary duct through the dogs cheek, then placed a
tube so they could measure saliva. They would introduce varying food or non-foods substances and track the amount of saliva produced. One of Pavlov’s discoveries was that different amount of saliva was produced depending on what was placed in the dog's mouth. He later noticed that the dogs were salivating before any signs of food was there. He then when into this furthermore and made his hypothesis that it was the signal stimuli that the dogs had associated with food, causing them to produce saliva before any food was present. The salivating was the unconditioned response because it is inborn, the dogs salivating at the sound of footsteps was the controlled reflex because it was acquired through experience, the food in Pavlov’s experiment was the unconditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned response being salivating. His new experiment took place in a sound-proof laboratory, the dog was exposed to a metronome ticking then was immediately presented with food. Then after repeating this even if no food was near or given the metronome ticking would make the dogs
salivate. Pavlov tried this test in numerous ways, but this seemed to be the most successful.
Significance and Impact of Pavlov’s Findings
Pavlov’s finding of Classical Conditioning helped explain to psychologists a major part of human behavior. This also helped explain phobias, anxieties, arousal sexually, the source of your emotions and even how advertisements work. Not only did it help psychologists get a better understanding of the human mind, but also other people with certain issues. It helped people overcome their disorders such as anxiety. In addition to helping people with problems Pavlov's principles have helped in unusual situations, such as warding off wolves and coyotes from farmer’s sheep. Overall many would agree that Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning is one of the most impactful psychology studies in history. He opened new curiosity and solved other unresolved ones.