Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov 187
While much of psychology focuses on how subjects respond to present conditions or how they
interpret past conditions, Pavlov’s research explores how subjects anticipate the future. I would
not claim that Pavlov anticipated the future, but as I will explore in the next section, the theory of
conditioned learning had profound influences for the rest of the twentieth and into the twenty-first
century.
POSTFORMAL REINTERPRETATION
How did the theory of conditioning become attributed to Pavlov? Like most science, his ideas
were not new. Materialist philosophers, such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill, speculated
about learning theories similar to conditioning well before Pavlov’s research. Not to mention
that many animal trainers and parents knew about conditioning through their own practice. The
idea has been around for millennia, so why has it been firmly attached to Pavlov? What is
special or different about the knowledge he produced? I put this question out there as a way into
reinterpreting Pavlov through a postformal lens. We will return to it later, but for now speculate
on your own about the answers to these questions.
As mentioned earlier, Pavlov privileged empirical observation as a way to produce knowledge;
he did not appreciate introspection or interpretation. However, he produced a learning theory
that is strictly associative. In other words, he deliberately researched a learning theory that is
not deliberate or deliberative at all. He did not study how organisms learn through logic; rather
he studied how organisms learn through associations. There are no logical conclusions to be
drawn while being conditioned. Rather, temporary connections are made that need continual
reinforcement in order to maintain.
Looking at the history of the twentieth century an argument can be made that Pavlovian
conditioning has been the most influential teaching and learning tool in America during this time.
In this case, I am not referring to what occurs inside the schools of America. Education occurs
inside and outside of the school building. Learning includes what we take away from all of our
experiences. One experience that most Americans shared, beginning in the early to mid–twentieth
century, is an unprecedented amount of exposure to advertising. Modern-day advertising uses
conditioning to create associations between products and deep needs most humans have. For
instance, beer may be associated to a healthy social life. If we accept that learning happens no
matter where we are then we can see that advertising may be the most influential teaching method
of the twentieth century. Certainly more money goes to educating people through advertising
than on educating people through academic methods.
In the nineteenth century, advertisements addressed people as though they were logical creatures.
They introduced the product, explained what it did, and how one could use it. The citizen
could read the ad and make a rational decision as to whether they need or want the product
advertised. During the 1920s a shift occurred in how companies presented their products through
advertisements. Rather than an explanation of the product and what it does, the representations
showed the lifestyle of the people who used the products. Sex, wealth, happiness, and success
were attached to the products. No longer were people addressed as rational creatures, but they
were addressed on an irrational level. They were addressed as creatures that could be conditioned,
using deep social needs—acceptance, power, satisfaction—as the unconditioned stimuli. If one
thought about it rationally, a certain kind of lipstick, cream, or beverage will not make one wealthy,
but conditioning does not require this kind of thought. Knowing that these kinds of connections
are temporary, companies follow Pavlov’s ideas of repetition, and continually advertise to keep
these associations in people’s minds. To this day, many Americans are addressed as conditioned
creatures more times in our lives than as rational creatures.