I remember reading A Brave New World. The infants who were to be laborers were subjected to books and flowers at the same time as irritating sounds. The infants associated nature and learning with misery and were happy in their industrial place in society. What is the scientific study of this type of thing called and what are some good books about it?

Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Skinner and Pavlov were big in this area, a long time ago.

any basic text book will tell you about it. There are some very amusing experiments run back in the day.

like the kid who was made to be afraid of fluffy animals:p

lol@ spaceman spliff. Thats not funny spaceman spliff!! they ruined that boys life. I heard he even becamne scared of cotton wool in the end!!! :( :D

Yeah, but you can undo the conditioning, or it'll "wear off" on it's own - it doesn't have to be permenant.

yeah psychology has some pretty strange studies from back in the day.

With human subjects commites in place it's hard to ruin peoples lives anymore. Though some labs go pretty far. A lab in my dept gets people drunk and shocks them. Now aparently this in on the up and up with aproval and what not, but still, a little strange:bugeye:

The scientific theory you describe is called "Behaviorism". As others have noted, BF Skinner was the big guy in that world. He really took it to an absurd extreme, though, in claiming that ALL behavior was conditioned. He did some strange things to his kid(s) to prove that point. If you read any of his texts, be sure to read some that have reputed his work as well.

like the kid who was made to be afraid of fluffy animals


Despite this still being placed in soem intro Psychology textbooks, this so-called experiment is known to be untrue. Yep- it was all made up! It has been tried, and despite repeated attempts, this reported finding has never been replicated.

Originally posted by Cog
It has been tried, and despite repeated attempts, this reported finding has never been replicated.
But the principle it's based on has been established, and there's RL applications... Why wouldn't it work?

Just look up Classical Conditioning, you'll find a shitload.