Foundations of Psychology Billy Mondragon PYS/300 5/28/12 Instructor/Pamela Parks

Everyone in life is conditioned in some way, either classically or operant, without even being aware that they are. These forms of associative learning has an affect on everyone and may have us develop a phobia or an addiction based from an event that has transpired. Phobias and addictions are basically emotional substances in ones mind. Classical and operant conditioning can one of the main factors for developing addictions, however classical conditioning has phobias occur more often than operant. Classical conditioning is a stimulus that is the result from a response of emotions that has been experienced on multiple occasions along with another stimulus that does not create a response of emotions, after a while the second stimulus will end up with the same emotional response. With this being said, classical conditioning is learning by association. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist that was the first to come to the conclusion that this type of conditioning is key to understanding why people develop addictions to drugs, phobias, and sexual responses in humans and various other living things. Even though real-time dynamic models of this learning process has started to take the place of verbal accounts, however there is still many unknowns about how the process through which stimuli that are insignificant when considered in isolation become significant when they signal biologically important events. Phobias usually develop through classical conditioning and tend to relate to any type of situation, idea, or object and most people have at least one phobia whether it is major or minor. Drastic phobias can be extremely devastating for those who suffer from it, because it can have serious consequences from disruptions in

their everyday lives. An example of this would be that if a snake has bitten a person, that person might develop a phobia for snakes. A fear of snakes can often affect people even if a snake is not physically present. High levels of anxiety can become present even if a snake is shown in a non-physical form. A person suffering from a phobia will go to drastic lengths to avoid this kind of stimulus at any cost. If this happens, the phobia will only continue to get worse because that person refuses to face their fear. This is how classical conditioning can increase the intensity of a phobia. Systematic desensitization is a type of treatment that helps those who suffer from phobias and other fears while assisting them with inducing relaxation. The treatments of phobias are intended to help the individuals problem with the use of desensitization. This is a type of treatment that involves therapeutic involvement that reduces the learned link between anxiety and objects or situations that are typically fear producing. The intention for the use of systematic desensitization is to lower or completely eradicate fears or phobias that sufferers find are bothering them the most in their daily lives by replacing their regular responses with new ones to a feared situation. With training, a person can develop a contradictory response of relaxation, which is irreconcilable with an anxious response; phobic reactions are diminished or eradicated. While phobias are triggered by fear, addiction is created by pleasure. Phobias can also be developed through operant conditioning. However, positive reinforcement can usually lead to an adaptive response; however it is not guaranteed that the individual will be able to correctly identify the behavior that

causes consequence (Kowalski et al., 2011). Operant Conditioning, which is also known as instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Punishing as a consequence can make a person cause an action less often. When an addictive urge is felt, and the object that is desired is unobtainable, the need to obtain that object so that the individual can have the desired effect still exists and can make the person go to more extreme lengths in order to obtain that object. The feeling that a person can get when they are doing something that can give them a high, whether it is drugs or putting themselves in immediate danger. This is a feeling that they are unable to achieve when they are in their normal state. Addictions can be formed because of the association to individual places on behaviors and environmental responses. The aspect of reinforcement basically applies to a result that causes the addictive behavior to take place with greater frequency (Kowalski et al., 2011). When dealing with an addiction, there can be several different types of treatments one can use. Extinction therapy is a well-known treatment method that has proven to be successful in many cases with treating addicts. Extinction therapy uses the idea that an addiction that is not maintained cannot continue. If reinforcement is withheld drug seeking responses will diminish, this is known as extinction. Extinction is a form of behavioral inhibition, thus conditioned appetitive behaviors are hidden, rather than reversed, by the learning of new contextual relationships Recent studies made by the department of psychiatry and neuroscience program state that environmental stress and the frustrated stress of withholding reward during extinction of drug self-administration induce similar

neurochemical events in the nucleus accumbency. These neurochemical events could cause a state-dependency on extinction learning such that later exposure to stress acts as a signal to enhance retrieval of extinction memory. Results suggest that extinction-induced up-regulation in NACAMPA receptors acts commonly to assist state-dependent extinction learning, as stressful situations evoke extinction memories that exert powerful inhibitory control over drug-seeking behavior. These results have important implications for behavior-based approaches geared toward treating drug addiction. Classic conditioning and operant conditioning seem to be the two main forms of associative learning. These forms of learning can be similar in several ways, but the major differences that distinguish the two are natural reactions that have been taught to become conditioned responses and behavior. If one uses one of these conditioning methods, they can change they way they are able to think, and also the way they respond. Classic conditioning an operant conditioning concepts utilize different techniques to banish learned behaviors from ones mind, and even though classic and operant conditioning can teach a person to give certain responses to certain events, these types of conditioning can be used to reverse the lesson, and can also be used in creating phobias and addictions.

References

Kowalski, R., & Westen, D. (2011). Psychology (6th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.