Cancer patients can develop an aversion to foods they eat right before undergoing chemotherapy. Although the foods themselves do not initially cause feelings of illness, pairing them with chemotherapy, which does cause patients to feel sick, leads to the foods becoming associated with these same feelings. This is an example of:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This is an example of classical conditioning, where a neutral stimulus (the food) becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus (chemotherapy) that naturally produces an unconditioned response (feeling sick). Over time, the neutral stimulus alone can elicit a conditioned response (feeling sick), even without the unconditioned stimulus.

Cancer Patients Can Develop an Aversion to Foods They Eat