Brilliant Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, 2nd Edition

Sometimes once is enough!

If you want to teach a dog to come when you blow a whistle you will probably have to pair the whistle with a suitable reward many times. Classical conditioning theory states that the more often an outcome (the dog treat) is paired with a particular contingency (in this case coming at the whistle) the stronger that association will become. This is why childhood, with its strong repertoire of repeating patterns, is such a fertile breeding ground for our core assumptions.

However, after a single bad dose of food poisoning from a fish dish, psychologist John Seligman found that he couldn’t stomach fish for a long time afterwards. Seligman realised that in some cases we only need to have one truly bad experience to alter ...