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The book refers to classical conditioning as the process by which a previously neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to elicit a response through association with a stimulus that already elicits a similar or related response. Classical Conditioning acts on our emotional responses to the environment. It’s in our everyday life, which you see in advertisements, commercials, and billboards all the time. An example of classical conditioning in real life is a candle commercial I’ve seen on television.
Its starts off with a daughter taking her significant other to her mothers house, which she told him how he will love her mothers home made apple cinnamon pie that she use to love when she was little. As the couple walk in her childhood home, she smells the warm sweet scent of what she thinks is her mothers apple pie and runs excited to go eat some. Turns out it was the new glade scented cinnamon apple pie candle, which her mother lit on purpose for her to smell, and gave her one to take and enjoy her memory of her mothers pie. This commercial of course is to sell the new candle flavor but if you look at it, this is classical conditioning.
The daughters love of apple pie and excitement to show her boyfriend the pie is the unconditioned stimulus because her love of apple pie can already evoke a response of wanting the pie. The unconditioned response is her need to want to eat the pie because shes been without it for so long and is hungry for it, she already loves the pie but she wants to eat it because shes hungry and misses her memory of it. The conditioned stimulus is the scented apple pie candle, that scent evoked her to bring back her memory of the apple pie, thats why she thought it was the real thing.
And the conditioned response is her memory and the need to want to eat the pie again because she just remembers the sweet smell of it not the taste. There are thousands of ads and commercials that have classical conditioning, even the things we do everyday is an example of it too. This example really caught my attention and to me would be spontaneous recovery because it is extinct for a while when the daughter is gone from home, but once she gets back in that house and smells the pie she remembers the scent and the feeling again.