The impetus for the most US behaviorist movement was neither American nor psychologist. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist researching the salivating response to stimuli. The dogs in his experiment salivated when presented with stimuli such as food, but he noticed they eventually associated the approach of a laboratory assistant with food, and salivated when the assistant approached. He reasoned that this was because these were responses to psychological stimuli. When he rang a bell each time food appeared, he found the dogs responded by salivating whenever the bell rang even if nothing happened. This was because they’d come to associate the bell ringing with the arrival of food. These findings became known as classical conditioning.
Before conditioning, the bell was a neutral stimulus, which prompted no response. During conditioning, the bell and food were paired. When the bell was presented without the food, the animal responded with salivation. After conditioning, the presentation of the bell alone provoked salivation. This shows that the association between the bell and the food had been formed during conditioning.
