Behaviorism

This is an anti-smoking poster, which applies the classic conditioning of behavioral learning theory. As we known, classic conditioning is a form of learning by temporal association. When two events repeatedly occur close together in time, they become fused in a person’s mind and produce the same response. The ash skull in the poster is an unconditioned stimulus. It elicits the unconditioned response of fear. Fear of death is a natural feeling with which human being is born. The cigarette is a conditioned stimulus, a previous neutral stimulus that comes to be linked with ash skull in people’s mind. As such, it too produces a fear response. The fearful feeling people experience when they think of the cigarette represent a conditioned response. Since people fear of the cigarette, they will quit or avoid the behavior of smoking. In this way, the poster achieves its goal.