Escape and Avoidance Conditioning: Understanding and Applying the Concepts Introduction Escape and avoidance conditioning are two types of classical conditioning that are used to explain how animals and humans learn from their environment. These concepts have been studied for decades and have important applications in fields such as psychology, education, and animal training. Escape Conditioning Escape conditioning is a type of classical conditioning in which an organism learns to avoid or escape from an unpleasant stimulus by performing a specific behavior. In other words, escape conditioning is the process of learning to remove oneself from an aversive situation. An example of escape conditioning can be seen in a dog that learns to jump over a fence to escape a painful shock. The dog associates the shock with the fence and learns to escape the aversive situation by jumping over the fence. As a result, the dog's behavior is shaped through reinforcement, as the escape behavior resu