How Did Ivan Pavlov Contribute To Psychology

Ivan Pavlov is best known in the psychology world for his founding and contribution in classical conditioning. Ivan was a Russian psychologist who had first started his career out in the world of physiology, a completely different science. He even came to win a Nobel prize in physiology and medicine. Although a large majority of his passion and interests were in learning and understanding the complex inner working of animals, he felt that something in his life was missing. As he progressed in his career as a well respected physiologist, more and more the fascination of psychology began to grow within him. It was not until much later that he tied his knowledge of animal physiology to his growing curiosity of psychology and inevitably, human
fear) to a neutral stimuli (i.e. music playing) by repetitive and consistent interactions between the two. Pavlov had stumbled upon this situation purely by accident at first. Pavlov worked with many animals but dogs were the animal of choice in his experiment at the time due to the fact that they were readily abundant and easily contained. He had surgically implanted a tube near their mouths to measure the amount the dogs would salivate for a certain experiment. One day as he was walking about and tracking the dogs’ digestion, he noticed the various dogs would salivate whenever he walked around and recorded data in their presence. Why was this? The response happened without food being offered to them. The dogs had began to associated him with food. He quickly learned about this fascinating discovery and took to refining the response. Ivan did this by ringing a bell and serving the food immediately afterwards. He did this several times which strengthen the associate between the two and also ensures that the response happens every time he rings the bell. After a period of time the dogs became conditioned to associate food with the sound of a bell. Therefore, every time he rang the bell, the dogs assumed that a meal was coming their way and in turn would