The Office Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning emphasizes the importance of learning from the environment and supports nurture over nature.
The office classical conditioning. Classical conditioning involves placing a neutral signal before a naturally occurring reflex. Classical conditioning is a type of learning that happens unconsciously. In this episode of the office jim is teaching dwight to say yes to jim s question and to put his hand out.
In classical conditioning a neutral stimulus is presented immediately before an unconditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning is a behaviorist theory of learning. At the beginning of jim s experiment the sound did nothing to dwight.
The tone was the neutral stimulus ns which is a stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response. To understand this concept of classical conditioning you need to understand the terms neutral stimulus conditioned. The neutral stimulus in this situation is the noise that the computer makes when restarted.
Whenever his computer reboots he offers dwight an altoid and dwight takes one every time. This clip can be used for classical conditioning when looking at theories of learning. However it is limiting to describe behavior solely in terms of either nature or nurture and attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behavior it is more likely that behavior is due to an interaction between nature biology and nurture environment.
After this occurs a few times dwight indicates that he expects an altoid the next time he hears the sound of jim s computer rebooting. Jim performs a conditioning experiment on dwight involving altoid breath mints. In pavlov s classic experiment with dogs the neutral signal was the sound of a tone and the naturally occurring reflex was salivating in response to food.
When you learn through classical conditioning an automatic conditioned response is paired with a specific stimulus.