Monday, October 19, 2009

Classical Conditioning in "A Clockwork Orange"



In the film, "A Clockwork Orange", a boy named Alex is sentenced to jail after him and his fellow "droogs" were involved in rape and murder. Men offer Alex the chance to be given "a treatment that gets you out of prison in no time and makes sure you never get back in again". He accepts and is taken to a medical facility where he is told that he is undernourished and in need of a shot. Little does Alex know that the shot is the unconditioned stimulus in the Ludovico technique. Alex has no past associations or learning experiences with the shot, yet it will cause a reaction, and this reaction will be Alex feeling sick when he is shown violent images. The violent scenes are the conditioned stimulus. The unconditioned response is the nausea that Alex experiences. The conditioned response is best seen when Alex feels sick when he is about to inflict violence on the man who is renting his room. The Ludovico technique proves successful, until after a while extinction occurs which is the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response as a result of the presentation of a conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned response. Alex feels the need to kill again.


Classical Conditioning in the movie : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k6CZYUxcOM
Another example of Classical Conditioning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7jcI8fAuI

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