Counter Conditioning

Counter Conditioning

Counter conditioning is a type of therapy based on the principles of Classical Conditioning that attempts to replace bad or unpleasant emotional responses to a stimulus with more pleasant, adaptive responses. For example, do you remember the case of Little Albert – the boy that John Watson conditioned to fear little white rats? Well, if Watson attempted to “uncondition” the fear response to the rats, he would be engaging in counterconditioning – attempting to replace the unpleasant response (fear) to the rats with a more pleasant response (happiness).