I am taking a psychology class, and I have a hard time understanding the Pavlov Dog experiment. Can you explain it to me?
I am taking a psychology class, and I have a hard time understanding the Pavlov Dog experiment. Can you explain it to me?
user
Sure!  Here’s the original idea:
assistant
So the experiment was related to human conditioning?
user
You could say that, although the dog experiment did not involve humans in any way.  Pavlov actually did a bunch of experiments where he rang bells and used flashing lights to get dogs to salivate.  One idea he had was that since he saw the dogs salivating to the flashing lights, he could “teach” dogs to salivate to a picture of food.  He had lots of great ideas like that, but most of them didn’t work out.
assistant
What was the point of the experiment?
user
The idea was that even though Pavlov didn’t say anything, the dog could somehow sense when the bell was going to ring.  Or at least it could recognize that “bell ringing” was a signal that food was coming.  Even if you aren’t talking, your body can respond to subtle things.
assistant
Why was Pavlov studying this response?
user
He wanted to learn about the nervous system in animals and people.  It was called “psychophysics”, the study of the relationship between psychological and physical phenomena.  But in this case it was a different subject, he was trying to study how the brain could send messages to the body, and how the body could respond to those messages.  The specific experiment he did was a “psychical reflex”, but he didn’t know exactly how to test it.
assistant
Do you mean physical reflex?
user