Many people in the United States have probably never heard of classical conditioning. To add to this, many of the select group who have heard of classical conditioning probably do not completely understand how it works. What's funny is that almost everyone in the United States is involved in some sort of classical conditioning every single day, with or without knowing it. You might be thinking how is that possible, but the answer is simple: advertisements. Many advertisements work on the basic principles of classical conditioning. They take an unconditioned stimulus paired with an unconditioned response, and use them to give you a favorable opinion of their product. Let's look at this commercial to really see the effects of classical conditioning. Everything about the Liquid-Plumr commercial screams classical conditioning. For starters, the commercial features a cast of entirely attractive people. This is a form of classical conditioning alone as it takes an unconditioned stimulus (the attractive people), which causes an unconditioned response (arousal, desire, etc..), to give the previously neutral conditioned stimulus (the Liquid-Plumer) a positive light in your brain, called the conditioned response. As if this isn't enough to convince the consumer to buy their product, Liquid-Plumer also uses well directed humor to effectively condition their target market in a similar fashion as above. When it is all said and done, Liquid-Plumr did a fabulous job with this commercial as it used two types of classical conditioning (attractive people and humor) to effectively train consumers to have a positive opinion of their product, with or without the consumer knowing it.
