Classical Conditioning is a process where a potent stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus, resulting in an automatic, conditioned response to the neutral stimulus.
First, let’s refer to all the horrible things as “the bad things”.
The bad things start during work, ‘refreshing’ the experience, so you want to avoid feeling these bad things again.
The bad things collectively is the “Unconditioned Stimulus”, which causes the “Unconditioned Response” of fear and aversion.
Now, doing work is a “Neutral Stimulus”. But when consistently paired with the unconditioned stimulus, which is the bad things, the neutral stimulus becomes a “Conditioned Stimulus”, which then leads to a “Conditioned Response”, which is fear and aversion.
This means that doing work, or the thought of it, instead of being a neutral stimulus, it also makes you experience the conditioned response too.
To summarize:
- Unconditioned Stimulus: The bad things.
- Unconditioned Response: Fear and Aversion.
- Neutral Stimulus: Doing or thought of doing work.
- Conditioned Stimulus: Evolved from neutral stimulus.
- Conditioned Response: Also from unconditioned response.
Extinction is also relevant.
Conditioning and reinforcement is happening all the time.