Explore the role of classical conditioning with this practical handout designed for clinicians seeking to better understand and utilize conditioning principles.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
Classical conditioning is a foundational principle in psychology that helps explain how emotional and behavioral responses can become linked to previously neutral stimuli. Its relevance extends across many psychological formulations, and understanding classical conditioning supports clinicians in identifying how client difficulties may arise and persist through learned associations. This resource offers a clear, practical introduction to classical conditioning for mental health professionals, with guidance on recognizing and working with conditioned responses—particularly in presentations such as phobias, anxiety disorders, and trauma-related conditions where exposure-based strategies can be especially effective.
This resource provides clinicians with a concise and accessible explanation of classical conditioning.
Conditioned fear responses that are amenable to extinction through exposure.
Developing through conditioned associations and maintained without reversal.
Conditioned behaviors resulting from the learned association of fear with specific stimuli.
Introduce clients to classical conditioning principles.
Identify and discuss the role of conditioned responses in client difficulties.
Formulate exposure interventions to weaken conditioned responses.
Classical conditioning refers to a type of associative learning in which a previously neutral stimulus becomes capable of eliciting a response after being paired repeatedly with a stimulus that naturally evokes that response. This concept was first systematically studied by Ivan Pavlov (1897/1902), who demonstrated that dogs could learn to salivate to the sound of a bell when it was repeatedly paired with the presentation of food. This basic learning mechanism has since been shown to underlie a wide range of emotional and behavioral responses in humans.
Contemporary clinical psychology recognizes classical conditioning as a transdiagnostic process that can contribute to the development and maintenance of diverse psychological difficulties, including anxiety disorders, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and avoidance behaviors (Barlow et al., 2004; Craske et al., 2008). Neutral stimuli (e.g., a location, sound, or sensation) can become conditioned triggers of fear or distress when paired with traumatic or aversive experiences.
Importantly, classical conditioning also helps explain how such associations can be weakened. Extinction, a process in which the conditioned stimulus is presented repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, leads to a reduction in the conditioned response (Rescorla, 2001). This forms the theoretical basis for exposure therapy, a core behavioral technique used in the treatment of anxiety and trauma-related conditions (Foa & Kozak, 1986; Craske et al., 2014).
