Field Guide · Glossary
Conditioned emotional response
Learning scienceAn emotional reaction to something, learned by association rather than taught deliberately, often shortened to CER.
How it works
It is built by pairing rather than by consequence: a thing repeatedly predicts something good or something bad, and the dog comes to feel accordingly about the thing itself. The leash predicting a walk and the car predicting the vet are both conditioned emotional responses, built by nobody in particular. This is what counterconditioning sets out to change, which is why counterconditioning works on pairing rather than on behavior, and why asking a frightened dog to sit does not address the fear.
What it looks like
A dog who has only ever been in the car on the way to the vet begins to lag and lick their lips as soon as the boot opens. Nobody taught that. The car reliably predicted something unpleasant, and it now produces the feeling on its own.
Commonly confused with
- Counterconditioning
- A conditioned emotional response is the feeling a thing produces. Counterconditioning is the procedure used to change it, by pairing that thing with something the dog likes.
Related terms