Creating classical conditioning is easy, if you're patient. You simply make sure that one event (which we can call the CS) always appears shortly before the second event (called the US). Repeat this enough times, and the subject of the training will usually get the idea. There are a few other things to pay attention to. One is getting the subject to pay attention to your pairing. This is described by Rescorla and Wagner's theory, which says that classical conditioning works best when the US (the second event) is a surprise. The more surprising the US is, the more we want to know why it happened. If you see a famous action movie actor staging a rally in the parking lot, and a second later, a construction vehicle crushes your car, you might not think these two events might be connected. But if this happens three times in a week, you'd learn to keep your car away from the famous action movie actor. That's classical conditioning! The appearance of the famous actor would be a signal that somebody's car was going to get crushed.

Q. How do biological and cognitive studies differ?

A. They ask different questions, and focus on different kinds of answers. Biological psychology is more about the machinery of behavior: how does the brain work, and how does it create our behavior? If we look at a monkey reaching for a banana, a biological psychologist might ask, "What is going on in our bodies and brains when we are hungry?" or "How does the brain and nervous system work to control the monkey's movements as it swings up to get the banana?" Cognitive psychology is more about the mind: how do our thoughts create our behavior? A cognitive psychologist watching a monkey reaching for a banana might ask "How does the monkey know that a banana is food?" or "What strategies does the monkey use when searching for food?" Because they ask different questions and because they look at different causes of behavior, they also use different techniques. Biological psychologists might use MRI to see which areas of the brain are active when a monkey is going after that banana, while cognitive psychologists may test monkeys by giving them fruit in different locations, or seeing if a monkey will realize that a banana painted blue is still a banana. Finally, we can combine the two subfields; neurocognitive studies might use an MRI to see what happens to the brain when the monkey is pondering the mysteries of the blue banana.

Q. Speaking of biological psychology, what part of the brain controls emotion?

A. A complex question! The "limbic system" down in the lower part of your brain, deals with strong, basic emotions like lust, anger, and fear. The amygdala and hypothalamus regions are particularly active when you experience these emotions. The frontal lobe of the brain (behind your forehead) deals with judgment and logic, so these centers help to suppress the raw emotions of the limbic system. More complex emotions are often combinations of other brain functions.

There is still debate over exactly what emotions are. They are stranger than you might think! There is some evidence that changing your facial expression will change your mood: if you smile, you will feel better, and if you frown, you will get crankier. It also appears to be true that arousal is the main physical state that accounts for all strong emotions, so that we can fake you out about your own feelings. Stanley Schachter once considered doing a "love potion" experiment, where he would expose unwitting male subjects to adrenaline (causing arousal) and then have them meet an attractive female confederate. Schachter was convinced the men would be far more attracted to the woman than they would be otherwise. He never did this experiment, but there have been similar ones that found the same result. Of course, we know women would never be this shallow, right?

Q. I would like to learn how to read people more effectively by their actions and behavior.

A. So would most of us! Sad to say, there is no "secret code" to figuring out people's motives from their behavior. There are a few keys, but they are hardly exciting. Paul Ekman, one of the world's foremost authorities on lies, says that the best way to figure out when somebody is lying is to see if their behavior is different from their behavior when they're telling the truth. This means, of course, that you have to know the person pretty well to begin with, that they are upset about telling the lies, and that you're not wasting too much time watching their faces or eyes, since these parts of the body are easy to control.

A better way to be more accurate at reading other people would be to learn how we commonly misread other people's intentions: most of us guess at why people do things, and these guesses are commonly wrong. A classic mistake is the Fundamental Attribution Error, which says that we believe others do things because that's what they wanted to do. This is a mistake, because we forget or ignore the fact that people's behavior is often caused by outside forces. When we do something stupid when we're driving, we call it a mistake. When somebody else does something stupid when they're driving, we call them bad drivers.

Submit your own question: email me at dushayr@morrisville.edu

See earlier "Ask Dr. Bob" pages:

August 25
September 1
September 15

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