Classical Conditioning in My Life

I experienced a food aversion when I took an anti-allergy medicine with water. When I was seven, I had an allergy on cats. When the allergy started, I took very nasty and bitter pills with water. In time whenever I drank water without the pills, I felt bitterness in my mouth. I didn’t drink water since then. Only in five years I started to drink water again. At first I felt bitterness in my mouth from the medicine which I took with water together. Therefore my unconditioned stimulus was the medicine, and the unconditioned response was the bitterness. When I didn’t have cats around anymore and stopped to use the medicine, I felt bitterness whenever I drank the water. Therefore my conditioned stimulus was the water while the conditioned response was the bitterness. Adolescent Emotional Experience When I lived in Russia, I often came home from school in a bad mood because I could not get along with my classmates. When I came from school, I tried to relax and either watched the movie or to do other things. Once I tried to relax by listening to the songs. I put my favorite song on and listened. Somehow I started to go over the things that happened at school. I became sad because I realized that I had no friends except for my family. The next few days I spent time listening to that song again. However, now that song made me feel sad. Now I don’t listen to that song because I don’t want to feel sad again. In this case the unconditioned stimulus is the things that happened at school while the unconditioned response is my sadness and loneliness because when I remembered them I felt bad. The conditioned stimulus is the song and the conditioned response is sadness because whenever I listened to that song I became sad. Fear or Phobia My friend is afraid of the large vehicles. When she was a child, she walked with her mother a lot. The park was far away from home, so they had to walk near the road to come there. The big vehicles were noisy. She didn’t like the noise in general. Later she was scared every time the vehicles beeped and started to cry. She was afraid of the loud and quick noises, and she still is. Now she closes her ears every time the noisy vehicle approaches. The unconditioned stimulus is the noise which caused the fear, the unconditioned response. The conditioned stimulus is the big vehicles which later produced the fear, the conditioned response.