Chapter !4

Aversive conditioning is the use of a noxious stimuli paired with a bad or unwanted behavior in order to stop the unwanted behavior. 


When I was younger I had a problem with sucking my thumb. I had a babysitter that decided to use aversive conditioning to abolish this unwanted behavior. On the first try my babysitter would put lemon juice on my thumb( the noxious stimuli)  so that when I sucked my thumb I would be turned off by the taste. Unfortunately for her this plan did not work because I happened to like the taste of lemon juice. So she decided to go a different route and use Tabasco sauce as the noxious stimuli. This time it worked, after a couple of attempts to suck my thumb I soon learned that sucking my thumb meant a very nasty taste. Though this may not be as drastic as using a drug on alcohols to make them sick, it can be a lesser example of aversive conditioning.