Definition
An unconditioned response is a response that is reflexive and involuntary in nature, which is reliably induced every time an organism comes across to biologically significant stimuli.
Introduction
Living organisms are naturally endowed with a variety of unconditioned responses that prepare them to interact with their environment in an adaptive and usually favorable manner (Baum 2017). Organisms do not have to learn these responses since they biologically received them. These type of responses (i.e., unconditioned responses) appear when an organism comes across stimuli which automatically, and naturally, trigger them (Thines 1987). For instance, a puff of air to an individual’s eye area automatically induces a response of an eyeblink (Shanks 1995). The person has not learned to respond with an eyeblink in the presence of this stimulus (i.e., puff of air); he/she naturally and automatically exhibits...
References
Baum, W. M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. Hoboken: Wiley.
McSweeney, F. K., & Murphy, E. S. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning. Malden: Wiley.
Ramnero, J., & Torneke, N. (2011). The ABCs of human behavior: Behavioral principles for the practicing clinician. Reno: Context Press.
Shanks, D. R. (1995). The psychology of associative learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spence, K. W. (1978). Behavior theory and conditioning. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Staddon, J. E. (2014). The new behaviorism: Mind, mechanism, and society. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Thines, G. (1987). From Darwin to behaviourism. Behavioural Processes, 15(2–3), 345. https://doi.org/10.1016/0376-6357(87)90018-0.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Christoforou, C. (2018). Unconditioned Response. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1043-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1043-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences