My fear of dogs
In this paper I will explain how and why I am afraid of dogs. I will describe what I learned and how it
could have occurred through classical conditioning, operant conditioning and cognitive-social learning. I
also will discuss the influence of media and prejudice on learning. Finally I will conclude my paper by
comparing and contrasting classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive-social learning.
When I was 5 years old, I had a terrifying experience. I was playing outside with a ball when a big
Rottweiler came running up to me barking. I was scared of the loud barking and the Rottweiler coming
close so fast, so I ran. By running of course, I made the dog chase after me. I was terrified. I thought the
dog was going to eat me. Since that experience I am afraid of dogs, especially Rottweilers, although I
learned to control my fear to some degree.
My learning of being afraid of dogs, could’ve occurred trough classical conditioning. I will explain
how. At the time it happened, the unconditioned stimulus would be the loud barking, the sharp
teeth of the dog, and something bigger than myself coming after me. The unconditioned response to
this was that I got scared and tried to run away. After this experience the conditioned stimulus was just
seeing a dog, and the conditioned response to seeing a dog was to get scared.
Now I will explain how learning this fear could have occurred through operant conditioning. Since I
was trying to run away from the dog, because I was so scared, the dog chased me. The consequence of
this behavior was, that I became even more terrified. So by not running away the next time a dog came,
and seeing it didn’t chase me because of that, it would have reinforced the behavior of not running
away from dogs. If I had repeated this process on the base of the fixed ratio of schedule of
reinforcements I would have learned not to run away from the dog when...