Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness01:14

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

Avoidance learning and learned helplessness are critical concepts in understanding behavioral responses to negative stimuli.
Avoidance learning occurs when an organism learns that a specific behavior can prevent an unpleasant outcome. For example, a student who receives a bad grade may start studying harder to avoid future poor grades. This behavior persists even when the negative outcome is no longer present. Avoidance learning is powerful because it maintains behavior in the absence of the...
Frustration and Conflict: Avoidance-Avoidance, Double-Approach Avoidance01:14

Frustration and Conflict: Avoidance-Avoidance, Double-Approach Avoidance

Avoidance-avoidance conflict refers to a psychological situation where a person must choose between two or more unpleasant alternatives. These conflicts are particularly stressful because neither option is desirable. This dilemma is often expressed in sayings like "caught between a rock and a hard place" or "between the devil and the deep blue sea." For instance, individuals who fear dental procedures may find themselves torn between enduring a painful toothache or facing the anxiety of...
Frustration and Conflict: Approach-Approach, Approach-Avoidance01:20

Frustration and Conflict: Approach-Approach, Approach-Avoidance

Frustration occurs when people are obstructed or prevented from achieving a desired goal or fulfilling a perceived need. For example, when someone's input is ignored in a discussion, it can lead to feelings of frustration. Conflict, however, arises from opposing interests, goals, or actions. Conflicts can take various forms based on the nature of these opposing desires or goals.
One common type of conflict is the Approach–Approach Conflict. In this case, a person faces two desirable options,...
Preparedness and Phobias01:09

Preparedness and Phobias

Human fear responses to certain stimuli, such as darkness, heights, deep water, and blood, can often arise despite the absence of direct negative experiences. This phenomenon is rooted in evolutionary psychology, which posits that humans have developed a predisposition to fear stimuli that historically posed significant survival threats. This predisposition, known as preparedness, suggests that early humans who developed a fear of potentially dangerous entities, such as venomous snakes and...
Instinctive Drift01:05

Instinctive Drift

Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...
Evolutionary Psychology01:20

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology explores the origins of human behavior and mental processes by framing them within the context of natural selection, a theory famously propounded by Charles Darwin. This field asserts that many behaviors common across human societies — ranging from instinctive fear reactions to complex social interactions — arose as evolutionary adaptations. These adaptations enhanced the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, thereby becoming embedded in the human psyche...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Anxiety, Cognitive Biases, and Evaluative Conditioning: An Eye-Tracking Experiment.

International review of social psychology·2026
Same author

Assessing the Relational Abilities of Large Language Models and Large Reasoning Models.

Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)·2026
Same author

The HEXACO Adjective Scale: A Cross-Cultural Validity Study.

Journal of personality assessment·2025
Same author

Re-examining Spontaneous Trait Transference from an Attributional Perspective.

Personality & social psychology bulletin·2025
Same author

Long-term Contingency Learning Depends on Contingency Awareness.

Journal of cognition·2025
Same author

The impact of model eyesight and social reward on automatic imitation in virtual reality.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance·2025

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm
09:00

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Published on: October 3, 2020

Evidence for a hierarchical structure underlying avoidance behavior.

Mieke Declercq1, Jan De Houwer

  • 1Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan, Ghent, Belgium. miekee.declercq@ugent.be

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes
|January 23, 2009
PubMed
Summary

Participants learned hierarchical knowledge in avoidance learning, using it to adjust behavior based on warning signals. This demonstrates complex learning beyond simple stimulus-response associations.

More Related Videos

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning
06:20

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning

Published on: October 15, 2021

The Active Place Avoidance (APA) Test, an Effective, Versatile and Repeatable Spatial Learning Task for Mice
06:03

The Active Place Avoidance (APA) Test, an Effective, Versatile and Repeatable Spatial Learning Task for Mice

Published on: February 16, 2024

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm
09:00

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Published on: October 3, 2020

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning
06:20

Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning

Published on: October 15, 2021

The Active Place Avoidance (APA) Test, an Effective, Versatile and Repeatable Spatial Learning Task for Mice
06:03

The Active Place Avoidance (APA) Test, an Effective, Versatile and Repeatable Spatial Learning Task for Mice

Published on: February 16, 2024

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Behavioral Neuroscience
  • Learning and Memory

Background:

  • Avoidance learning typically involves a warning signal preceding an aversive stimulus.
  • Learners must perform a specific response to prevent the aversive outcome.
  • Previous models often focus on direct stimulus-response or stimulus-stimulus associations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if avoidance behavior can be mediated by hierarchical knowledge.
  • To determine if participants can learn conditional relationships between signals and avoidance responses.
  • To explore the role of occasion setting in avoidance learning.

Main Methods:

  • Participants were exposed to a warning signal followed by an aversive unconditioned stimulus.
  • A designated response was required to prevent the aversive outcome.
  • The effectiveness of the avoidance response was manipulated based on the nature of the warning signal.

Main Results:

  • Participants successfully acquired hierarchical knowledge regarding the warning signals.
  • Learned knowledge was applied to modulate avoidance behavior effectively.
  • Behavioral adjustments indicated an understanding of conditional relationships.

Conclusions:

  • Avoidance learning can be based on complex hierarchical knowledge.
  • Occasion setting principles effectively explain the observed avoidance behaviors.
  • Findings support modified accounts of avoidance learning, including Lovibond's (2006) framework.