Steven Spielberg's classic movie Jaws is a thriller about a great white shark terrorizing tourists at a local beach. For each shark sighting, eerie music began playing just before the shark's appearance. As the unseen shark came closer, the tempo of the music picked up. After the audience experienced this a few times, the sound of the music triggered the emotional reaction of fear in the audience, even if the shark still had not appeared. At that point, fear in response to the sound of the eerie music was a(n):
A) unconditioned response (UCR).
B) conditioned response (CR).
C) conditioned stimulus (CS).
D) unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The fear response triggered by the sound of the eerie music is a conditioned response (CR), because it has been learned through classical conditioning. The music has become associated with the appearance of the shark, which originally elicited a natural fear response, and now the music alone is enough to elicit that same fear response.

Steven Spielberg's Classic Movie Jaws Is a Thriller About a Great