Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

026 Classical Conditioning

A method of influencing how a person viscerally responds to a thing.

Classical conditioning was the first type of learning to be studied by behavioral psychologists. Lab workers noticed that dogs in the lab began salivating when the workers entered the room. Because the lab workers feed the dogs, their presence (neutral stimulus) had become associated with food (trigger stimulus) and, therefore, elicited the same response as the food itself (salivation). Similar behaviors are seen in cats when they come running at the sound of a can opening. The influence occurs at an unconscious level and results in a physical or emotional reaction.1

Humans respond to classical conditioning in the same way as animals, and thus this ...