Question

Knowing that a student fears exams, the instructor wears a bright red shirt only on exam day, every exam day, to see how long it is before the red shirt becomes an object of fear to the student.

a) Classical conditioning
b) Operant conditioning
c) Extinction
d) Observational learning

Answer 1

The example of an instructor wearing a bright red shirt on exam days to instill fear corresponds to classical conditioning, where an originally neutral stimulus becomes associated with an emotional response.

Step-by-step explanation:

The scenario presented, where an instructor wears a bright red shirt on exam days to observe if it becomes a trigger for a student's fear of exams, is an example of classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, a subject learns to associate an originally neutral stimulus (in this case, the red shirt) with a significant event (exam day) that elicits a natural emotional response (fear of exams). Over time, the neutral stimulus alone may trigger the response (fear), even without the accompanying event. This phenomenon is similar to the research conducted by John B. Watson and his colleagues, including the well-known Little Albert experiment where a child developed a conditioned fear response to a white rat after it was repeatedly paired with a loud noise.