Pavlovian conditioning of shock-elicited aggression: a discrimination procedure.

Lyon et al. (1970) worked with rats in a small lab cage.

They played one tone before giving a mild electric shock. They played a different tone when no shock came.

The team watched if the rats learned to show aggressive posture only during the shock-predicting tone.

Aggressive posture grew strong during the shock tone and nearly stopped during the safe tone.

When the tones were switched, the aggression switched too, showing real stimulus control.

SCHUTZ et al. (1962) first showed that shock alone makes rats fight without any training. Lyon et al. (1970) took that raw reflex and brought it under tone control, extending the earlier work.

Aragona et al. (1975) used tones to control avoidance lever presses even when the "safe" tone still delivered some shocks. Their study and the target paper both prove that discriminative stimuli can rule behavior even when shock is still present, linking aggression and avoidance under one principle.

Berler et al. (1982) later showed that post-shock behavior can be shaped by operant schedules. Together these papers map three ways shock-controlled responses—reflexive, Pavlovian, and operant—can be guided by signals.

You now know that aggressive responses are not just random explosions; they can be turned on or off by simple cues through classical conditioning. When you see sudden aggression in a client, scan for environmental signals that may have gained control, like a beep before disappointment or a teacher’s warning tone. Test if changing the cue or its timing reduces the behavior, then reinforce a safe replacement during the new cue.