stereotype [Grk stereos ‘firm, solid,’ typós ‘form, shape, image’]

Central notion of behavioral psychology ( behaviorism) according to which human (and thus also linguistic) behavior can be explained or reconstructed after a model of a mechanical apparatus. All forms of experience, ideas, and intentions are interpreted as the result of an interchange between observable stimuli and the corresponding responses. Regarding the reactions, one differentiates between ‘immediate’ and ‘conditioned’ reflexes. Immediate reflexes are spontaneous, involuntary reactions to stimuli, such as squinting when bright lights are turned on; conditioned reflexes, on the other hand, are artificial, acquired reactions to stimuli picked up through the process of learning. The first experiment in stimulus-response was undertaken with a dog by the Russian physiologist I. Pavlov (1849-1939), in which it was demonstrated that the immediate natural reflex of salivation when the dog saw its food occurred as a conditioned reflex after corresponding training, when a bell sounded (initially simultaneously with the offering of food), itself given as a stimulus. This process is known as classic conditioning. This one-dimensional schema is differentiated by taking a non-observable, mediating case of stimulus-response into consideration. Such a modified model of stimulusresponse is the basis of the so-called mediation theory of meaning.