Classical Conditioning Quotes

The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat.

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

I'd say 3/4 of advertising works on pure Pavlov. Think how association, pure association, works. Take Coca-Cola company (we're the biggest share-holder). They want to be associated with every wonderful image: heroics in the Olympics, wonderful music, you name it. They don't want to be associated with presidents' funerals and so-forth.

Of course, Behaviorism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.

The truth is, Pavlov's dog trained Pavlov to ring this bell just before the dog salivated.

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

I think [Ann Coulter] understands that, she's Pavlov's dog. She gets the corn kernel if she hits that drum once in a while.

In order to produce learned fear, you take a neutral stimulus like a tone, and you pair it with an electrical shock. Tone, shock. Tone, shock. So the animal learns that the tone is bad news. But you can also do the opposite - shock it at other times, but never when the tone comes on.

Well, even to this day, if I smell a Big Mac, I'm like Pavlov's dog. My mouth starts watering immediately, like, 'Man, that is so good,' but I can't take a bite of it.