Classical Conditioning _ Persuasion Blog

light turns on. Cost conscious shoppers will make a beeline to that table because they associate a
good sale with the blue light. (And, the research proves that people are more likely to buy the sale
item under the blue light even if the item isn’t a good value.)
Classical conditioning works with advertising. For example, many beer ads prominently feature attractive
young women wearing bikinis. The young women (UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS) naturally
elicit a favorable, mildly aroused feeling (UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE) in most men. The beer is
simply associated with this effect. The same thing applies with the jingles and music that accompany
many advertisements. The music may be patriotic, sad, or take us back to the days of our youth
when we were wild and free and tomorrow belonged to me. Then they connect the product or service
with the feeling elicited by the music and Ding-Dong, Alpo.
Clearly, classical conditioning is a pervasive form of influence in our world. This is true because it is
a natural feature of all humans and it is relatively simple and easy to accomplish.
Workers of the World, Unite, Baby!
Professor Greg Razran conducted an interesting study of classical
conditioning with political slogans. He gave a small group of 24
adults a list of political slogans contemporary for the times (the late
1930s). Consider:
America for Americans!
Workers of the World Unite!
No Other Ism but Americanism!
Down With War and Fascism!
He had the participants rate the slogans on a 7 point attitude scale. Then over the next several
days, he exposed each participant to these slogans under 3 different conditions: 1) while eating a
free lunch, 2) while smelling foul odors, and 3) a neutral condition. He made sure that a particular
slogan only appeared in one condition and he repeated this pairing of condition with slogan several
times. After these exposures to the “persuasive communication” (free lunch, foul smell, or neutral),
he then had the participants rerate their attitude toward the slogans.
Not too surprisingly, Razran found that people changed their attitudes towards the slogans depending
upon the “persuasive communication” condition. If the slogan was associated with the free
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