Aversive Conditioning
Aversive conditioning also contributes to behavioral development, and the importance of unpleasantness as a control agent should never be ignored.
Escape/Avoidance Learning
Escape learning is an aversive conditioning procedure in which a response terminates a primary aversive event. Through negative reinforcement, we learn to get away from conditions that are painful or unpleasant. An example of escape learning is taking medication to reduce cold symptoms. Through avoidance learning, the necessary coping responses can be acquired without undue physical suffering. Avoidance training involves using a signal or cue to alert the animal or person to impending danger.
Punishment
Punishment is another aversive control technique. The effect of punishment is to decrease the probability of the response that produces it. Punishment uses aversive means to make a response unlikely. For punishment to be effective, it must be intense and immediate.
Controllability of Aversive Events
As we have indicated, when you deal with aversive control measures, you necessarily deal with stress. One would think that bad situations that are controllable would seem easier to handle than bad situations that are uncontrollable. The key is the amount of time the organism is exposed to the aversive events.
Learned Helplessness
Martin Seligman discovered the phenomenon of learned helplessness, a decrease in responding after exposure to incontrollable aversive events. The reasoning behind this concept is that exposure to the aversive noncontigency produces an expectancy that the behavior cannot produce changes in the environment.
