The unconditioned stimulus is a natural trigger for a response in an organism in classical conditioning. It is used to intervene in behavior. Operant conditioning uses rewards or punishments to modify behavior. The unconditioned stimulus is related to reinforcement in operant conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus is something that naturally elicits a response from an organism. The term comes from classical conditioning, a type of psychological procedure first studied systematically by Ivan Pavlov. The unconditioned stimulus is central to a conditioning experiment; it is the wedge used by the researcher to begin to intervene in behavior.
Suppose William cries whenever someone insults him. According to classical conditioning theory, this response could be exploited through the systematic association of insults with some other stimulus. For example, if every time the executioner insults William, the executioner also shows him a picture of a unicorn, William might be conditioned to cry upon seeing images of unicorns.
In this example, the insult is the unconditioned stimulus. When William cries in response to being insulted, this behavior is called unconditional response. This behavior is based on a reaction observed to be valid for William before the experiment began. The new stimulus – the image of a unicorn – is a conditioned stimulus. If William now cries whenever he sees a picture of a unicorn, this behavior would be called a conditioned response.
The prototypical example of classical conditioning is, of course, Pavlov’s experiment with dogs. In the most famous of these experiments, Pavlov rang a bell before feeding them. Dogs salivate naturally after being exposed to food; over time, they began to salivate after hearing only the bell. In this experiment, food is the unconditioned stimulus because it naturally produces salivation. The bell is the conditioned stimulus; salivation goes from being an unconditioned response to a conditioned one when dogs display it in response to the bell rather than the food.
Classical conditioning is related to, but distinct from, another psychological procedure called operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, behavior is modified by rewarding or punishing it after it is performed. Giving a dog a treat when it performs a trick on demand is an example of this type of conditioning.
Strictly speaking, there is no unconditioned stimulus in operant conditioning. Reinforcement given to an animal after it performs a behavior, however, is a close analog to the unconditioned stimulus, because it relies on a known pre-existing response. Rewards, such as a dog treat, would not be sufficient for operant conditioning if the dog did not intrinsically like them. Similarly, punishment would not discourage the behavior unless it already unconditionally produces pain.
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