What's a conditioned response in psych?

A Basic Concept: The idea is, when one pairs a stimulus with an effect over and over again, that can be called a conditioned response. The classic example is pavlov and his dog. A conditioned response may be something as simple as complimenting your spouse upon arriving home resulting in a kiss. There can be desirable and undesirable conditioned responses.

Technical term: CR: The cr is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus. For example, the smell of food might be viewed as an unconditioned stimulus producing a watering mouth (unconditioned response). By pairing the sound of a whistle (conditioned stimulus) with the smell of food, a cr would be having a watering mouth in response to the sound of the whistle (previously neutral).