Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian physiologist

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian physiologist

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian physiologist. His contributions rest primarily in psychology, where he influenced behaviorism. Initially, a religious scholar, Pavlov’s encounter with Charles Darwin’s scientific ideas and those of other scientists, attracted his passion for the natural sciences. Eventually, he enrolled for physiology and subsequently held positions in the same field until later in his life.

Classical Conditioning

One of Pavlov’s prominent contributions was classical conditioning. It is a scenario in which a naturally occurring stimulus, usually biologically potent, pairs with a conditioned stimulus to produce an independent conditioned response. In other words, classical conditioning is an experimental phenomenon in which a researcher repeatedly connects an unconditional stimulus with a conditional one to produce a conditioned response to the artificial stimulus independently (Eelen, 2018). Pavlov discovered this type of intervention through a study he conducted with dogs while investigating the functioning of their digestive systems. As a physiologist, he determined to understand the role of saliva in digestion, which informed his well-known Pavlov’s dogs experiment.

In the study, Pavlov paired the presentation of food with other stimuli such as bell ringing. With time, he noticed that the dog could respond to the bell alone without the feeder presenting food to it. That observation formed the basis for the idea that behavior is learnable. By performing a converse experiment of giving the conditioned stimulus alone without food, Pavlov discovered that the research subjects (dogs) could gradually fail to respond to the stimulus. For instance, by ringing the bell and not giving the dog food, the dogs eventually “unlearned” reacting to the sound. That observation, in turn, formed the basis for the conclusion that behavior is also “un-learnable.” These concepts influenced behaviorism and other contemporary theories, such as operant conditioning.

Cognitive Behavioral and other Therapies

Pavlovian principles influence a myriad of practices and therapies today, including cognitive-behavioral therapy. Psychiatrists agree that conditioning is a learning issue, and that affects many contemporary practices. For example, psychiatrists who help drug addicts encourage them to stay away from drugs to enforce their un-learning process and reduce addiction (Rehman et al., 2019). Art therapists encourage their clients to draw or perform other tasks that increase their awareness and promote wellbeing.

Behaviorism

Pavlov’s findings, although discovered from physiological studies, laid the foundation for behaviorism, a psychological field. The area concerns studying behavior/actions, and it assumes that people and animals learn almost everything. The theory places the environment at a central place. It argues that people and animals do what they do to adapt to their environments. It explains that a researcher can measure or observe human and animal actions in a controlled setting; that is, in a place that allows for comparison. To behaviorists, people and animals are indifferent, and that explains the choice of animals as the primary study subjects for disease and other phenomena.

Operant Conditioning

Contemporary psychologists have used Pavlov’s findings as to the basses for other theories. An example is operant conditioning, where the understanding of the reflex actions informs the argument for reinforcement or punishment. The idea is that humans and other organisms respond positively to reinforced behavior and negatively to punished behaviors. For instance, children may work harder in school to get better grades because they know that they are likely to get gifts from their parents. At the same time, a child may deliberately fail to act in a specific way to trigger specific responses from their parents, such as when they want their parents to give them rewards. The basis for these practices is the understanding that some behaviors accompany positive rewards, and others invite punishment or discouragement. One of the areas where these theories produce a tangible effect is the design of incentives for performance improvement. For example, school districts implement group or individual incentives to encourage teachers to work harder and discourage complacency and laziness.

References

Eelen, P. (2018). Classical conditioning: Classical yet modern. Psychologica Belgica, 58(1), 196.

Rehman, I., Mahabadi, N., & Rehman, C. I. (2019). Classical Conditioning. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.