Classical Conditioning

In the 1890s a scientist named Ivan Pavlov classically conditioned Dogs to salivate at the sound of the tone. For those who are not in psychology class or are unfamiliar with Pavlov’s work, Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning in which an uncontrolled stimulus (dog food in Pavlov’s experiment) leads to an uncontrolled response (dog salivation in Pavlov’s experiment) which changes to a controlled stimulus (bell tone in Pavlov’s experiment) which leads to a controlled response (dog salivation in Pavlov’s experiment). To perform this experiment Pavlov understood that dogs salivated at the sight of dog food, he started to ring a bell directly before giving the dogs their food. The dogs began to associate the tone with their food. Eventually, the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the bell. This experimental design is very famous and has been used by many different scientists to teach different associations.
The first time I found out about this experiment was when I was watching the NBC television show “The Office”. The laid back, well-liked character, named Jim, trained the clown character, Dwight, to salivate at the sound of Jim’s computer starting up by giving Dwight a mint every time Jim turned on his computer. I began to wonder, could I classically condition myself to like foods that I normally dislike? Or could I make my diet healthier with this experiment?
I decided that making my diet healthier is more important (and easier) than trying to get myself to like different foods. I tried to figure out what I should change and I came to the conclusion that I crave chocolate in the early afternoon. I had to figure out what my uncontrolled stimulus (US), uncontrolled response (UR), controlled stimulus (CS), and controlled response (CR) were going to be. My uncontrolled stimulus would be the afternoon salivation/desire for chocolate and my uncontrolled response would be eating some chocolate in the afternoon. I wanted to pair this desire for chocolate with a desire for an apple. In the afternoon, when I began to have my sweet craving, I grabbed a piece of chocolate along with a few apple slices. Each afternoon, I would take less chocolate and more apple slices. Finally, I took all the chocolate out of my kitchen and replaced it with apples. My cravings for chocolate started to fade and I began craving apples in the afternoon. I was so proud of my great success and personal use of psychology. Even if it wasn’t exactly a perfect classical conditioning experiment, I credited Pavlov for the idea.
Unfortunately, I forgot to mention something psychologists call “extinction”. My psychology book (Myers, Psychology) defines extinction as “the diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical condition when the unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS)”. For Pavlov’s dogs the tone (CS) no longer signaled food (US) so the dogs stopped salivated when they heard the tone because no food was given after the bell rung. Upon returning to school, my craving for chocolate returned and I fell back into my unhealthy routine. Maybe it had something to do with the environment, maybe it was because there are no apples in my room, or maybe I am genetically predisposed to crave chocolate.
I guess what they say is true, old habits really do die hard.