Unconditioned stimulus: what it is and how it is applied

Let's imagine that we haven't eaten in a while and we're hungry. Let's also imagine that in this situation they put our favorite dish in front of us. Surely we will begin to notice our hunger more intensely, and we will notice how we begin to secrete saliva. In a less perceptible way, our digestive system, spurred on by the sight and smell of food, will begin to prepare for the act of eating. Now imagine that we get a cramp, or a puncture. We will immediately move away from its source, by way of reflex.

All these examples have one thing in common: the source of the cramp or the prick or the presence of food are stimuli that have generated an immediate response, by themselves. These are unconditioned stimuli., a concept that we are going to deal with throughout this article.

• Related article: "Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors"

What is an unconditioned stimulus?

Receives the name of unconditioned stimulus all that stimulus or element that has the ability to generate an autonomous and regular response to a person or life form

, said stimulus being something biologically relevant to it.

Said unconditioned stimulus can be both appetitive and aversive, being able to suppose both a benefit and a harm to the subject to be experiencing it. The response that they generate in the organism or living being, for example the activation of some body systems or the reflex movement, are also called unconditioned. It is important to bear in mind that these responses occur at an innate level, not being the product of subjective reflection or assessment of whether something is pleasant or unpleasant for us.

Although there are many stimuli that can be considered unconditioned, the truth is that generally are linked to basic processes for our survival: pain or the fight/flight response to an attack, the presence of food, or the presence of sexually attractive stimuli. However, it must be taken into account that the specific stimulus can vary enormously depending on the species or even the brain configuration.

Its role in classical conditioning

The unconditioned stimulus, which generates a natural, unconditioned response, is not only important for its own sake. but it is also the basis (according to the behaviorist perspective) that allows the creation of associations, which are in turn time the basis of the emergence of learning and behavior according to classical behaviorism.

And it is that in the environment there are a large number of stimuli that do not generate a direct reaction, which in principle are neutral to us. But if they associate repeatedly and consistently with an unconditioned stimulus, they can associate with it. and cause them to generate a response identical or similar to that generated by the unconditioned stimulus itself.

Thus, the association between unconditioned and neutral stimuli, which become conditioned, is a basis for the ability to learn and acquire simple behaviors. This process is what is called conditioning (since one, the unconditioned, conditions the other) that as far as the simple association between stimuli and responses is concerned, it is called classical conditioning.

• You may be interested in: "Classical conditioning and its most important experiments"

Unconditional but not unchangeable

The unconditioned stimulus has the capacity to generate a response by itself, but this does not mean that it will always generate an unconditioned response. It is possible that an unconditioned stimulus is devalued and loses its properties.

An example of this is satiation, a process in which the fact of submitting abundantly to the exposure to a stimulus that generates a reflex response ends up causing the response to this decrease. For example, if we eat a lot and are exposed to food (unconditioned stimulus) it will not generate a response since we are already satiated.

Also habituation to the stimulus may occur: the repetition of the exposure to the stimulus over time makes the response it generates less intense. For example, if exposure to sexual stimuli is common, the stimulus in question may lose (although also increase, existing sensitization instead of habituation) part of its power appetitive.

Finally counterconditioning may occur, in which an unconditioned stimulus is paired with another stimulus that elicits an opposite response. We could say that the unconditioned stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, generating a response where before there was another.