What is the neutral stimulus in psychology?

Our life is saturated with stimulation. Just go for a walk around the city and look at advertisements here, advertisements there. Thus, day by day we live in the midst of stimuli of different types and forms that provoke reactions adapted to the context. However, it is curious, but there are also stimuli that do not produce any type of response. Behaviorism designates these stimuli as neutral stimuli (EN).

What is a neutral stimulus and why does it not generate any response? Can a neutral stimulus produce a reaction? In behavioral psychology it is maintained that every response is preceded, at least, by a stimulus.

It seems, then, that our life and everything we do is a simple reaction. However, is it really so? In this article we will analyze, from behaviorism, what neutral stimuli are, why they do not produce a response and how they could cause them.

What is a neutral stimulus?

Ivan Pavlov developed different experiments under the reflexological tradition. One of the most recognized, and which gave way to the appearance of classical conditioning, was that of dogs.

In it, the dogs salivated (unconditioned response) in the presence of food (unconditioned stimulus), but not in the presence of a neutral sound (bell sound). However, once the animals associated the sound of the bell with food, they were able to salivate (conditioned response) just by hearing the sound of the bell (conditioned stimulus).

For classical conditioning, the response of one organism to one stimulus is transferred to another through an association between both.. This type of conditioning is based on what we could call signal learning. A signal is a stimulus that anticipates, with a certain degree of reliability, a generally significant event.

If we go back to Pavlov’s experiment and analyze it carefully, we will see that the sound of the bell did not generate any type of significant response in the dogs, such as salivation. At most, it made the dogs focus their attention on her, but no more. No significant response was emitted either at the physiological or behavioral level.

Therefore, we can affirm that a Neutral stimulus is one that has no effect on behavior. or that it does not produce a significant response in the body.

The neutral stimulus does not produce any type of response.

Why doesn’t the neutral stimulus produce a response?

An EN does not provoke a response because it does not significantly affect the organism. In other words, it doesn’t represent something important. Its presence or absence is rather indifferent, because it has no value for the individual. If it is present, it does not affect the individual at a behavioral, emotional, or cognitive level; If he is absent, the same.

Some examples of neutral stimuli are the following:

The sound of a spoon that you drop intentionally. The noise of a table when you drag it across the floor. The cup of boiling water on the stove. The sound of a bell, as in Pavlov’s experiment. The melody of a song when You hear it for the first time. The taste of candy when you eat it.

The stimuli in these examples do not activate a transcendent response in the organism. Their presence does not affect their existence in the slightest. Whether or not the spoon makes a noise when falling does not affect your behavior negatively or positively. When you eat candy, you may enjoy it, but it doesn’t produce a significant response, neither physiologically nor behaviorally speaking.

Neutral stimuli do not produce a response because they are simply not associated with an (unconditioned) stimulus that causes it.. If they were, the story would be different.

For example, the sound of a door creaking open is a neutral stimulus that does not provoke any response in a cat. If we associate that sound repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus (food), that neutral sound will eventually be able to change the animal’s behavior. This is what happened in Pavlov’s dog experiment.

When the neutral stimulus produces a response, it becomes a conditioned stimulus.

How could an EN produce a response?

Actually, an EN could never produce a response. To do so it would have to become another type of stimulus: a conditioned stimulus. To do this, it would have to be associated with an unconditioned stimulus (US), which are those capable of producing automatic responses, for example, food (US) caused salivation in Pavlov’s dogs.

When Pavlov repeatedly presented the sound of the bell (EN) in the presence of food (EI), it managed to trigger the same responses that the food provoked. That is, the acquired sound of the bell, the unconditioned stimulus, the property of causing a response: salivation (unconditioned response).

Thus, as we mentioned above, the response to one stimulus is transferred to another through an association between the two.

Once the EN is associated with an EI, the first is capable of producing a response similar to the one that the EI produced, only this will no longer be an unconditioned response, but a conditioned one, and the EN will no longer be neutral, but conditioned (EC ).

In reality, what changes is the name of the stimulus and its ability to produce a response., because in itself the stimulus remains the same. For example, in Pavlov’s experiment, the sound of the bell remained the same. In the example of the cat and the sound of the door, the squeak that it made was the same.

Finally, in psychology the neutral stimulus is understood as one that does not have a significant impact on the behavior of the organism, but at the same time has the potential to produce intense responses, to the extent that it is associated with an unconditioned stimulus. . These types of stimuli are very common in our lives.

From your experience, what stimuli (EN) did not generate responses in you and now do (EC)? Can you determine what the neutral stimuli are in your daily life?

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