Classical conditioning is the psychological process of establishing connections between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned response to elicit a conditioned response to an earlier neutral stimulus that becomes conditioned. It is viewed in the context of behaviorism, an approach to psychology that holds that all types of behavior are learned using conditioning.
For example, as explained by Akpan, a dog’s salivation is an unconditioned response to meat, which is an unconditioned stimulus. The dog will not salivate in response to a neutral stimulus, such as a bell, unless combined with an unconditioned stimulus (meat). As a result, a dog’s salivation in response to the sound of a bell after some repetition of the learning is an example of classical conditioning. Salivation is a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus of a bell sound.