Pavlov's dog: You act without thinking
The power of classical conditioning
🏷️ Categories: Behavior.
Imagine that your decisions, opinions and ideas were not as free as you think.
That your behavior, to a large extent, did not depend on you, but was shaped by mental associations that arose over the years. And the most incredible thing: that you didn't even realize that these associations were happening.
Welcome to the world of classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning affects the way you act, learn and react from childhood. If you've ever felt chills when you heard a song or associated a brand logo with an experience, you've experienced classical conditioning.
You will see how it shapes your life and how it can happen without you even realizing it.
Pavlov's Experiment: The Origin of Everything
In the early 20th century, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was investigating digestion in dogs when he made an unexpected discovery.
He observed that dogs began to salivate without seeing the food they were about to receive; they salivated only when they heard the footsteps of the person bringing the food. Something was going on in the dogs' brains: they had associated the sound of footsteps with the arrival of food.
Pavlov decided to experiment further.
Every time he fed the dogs, he rang a little bell. At first, the sound provoked no special reaction. After repeating the process several times, the dogs began to salivate just by hearing the sound.
Even if the food did not appear.
Here was the basis of the classical conditioning discovered by Pavlov.
Unconditioned stimulus: The food, which makes the dog salivate.
Unconditioned response: Salivation at the food (response to the stimulus).
Neutral stimulus: The bell (at first, no effect on salivation).
Conditioned stimulus: The bell, after association with food.
Conditioned response: Salivation in response to the bell.
That's right, Pavlov demonstrated that dogs learned to react to stimuli that previously meant nothing to them, something essential for their training. Here you can see the 4 steps in an image.
And the most disturbing thing is that this also applies to humans…
The Power of Conditioning in Your Daily Life
1. Advertising
Coca-Cola is the perfect example.
Charlie Munger explained in a speech how Coca-Cola has spent decades associating its drink with happiness, friendship and special moments. After so many ads, just seeing a red can with a white logo makes you want to drink and think about how it tastes.
It's just like the dog with the bell and its food.
So present in people's minds is the brand name that it is common to call any similar soft drink “Coca-Cola”. This is availability heuristic.
2. Fear and anxiety
This conditioning is so basic that sometimes we can't even remember when the fear or anxiety we feel started, we just know it's there.
If you ever had a bad experience in an elevator, you might develop a fear of getting into another one, even if the new situation is totally safe.
A child who is severely criticized every time he or she speaks in public may develop a fear of public speaking when he or she grows up.
This happens with phobias, which is why gradual exposure to the phobia works, because you demystify the phobia, like the dog who gradually begins to see that the bell and the food are not actually always related.
Just as elevators are not related to being trapped.
Nor is public speaking related to being criticized.
3. Relationships and attraction
We are attracted to people we associate with positive experiences.
If every time you are with someone you have laughed and had a good time, you will begin to associate their presence with happiness. The opposite is also true: if someone reminds you of difficult times, you may develop a dislike for that person without knowing why.
In reality, your experiences with that person may be due to context.
Maybe the person never had anything to do with it.
Maybe the person wasn't funny, it was the situation you were in with them.
Maybe they weren't unpleasant, it was the bad day you had and the place you were in.
It's pure Law of Agreeableness.
Now that you know this, you will understand many human behaviors.
If you think about it, even the consumption of pornography is classical conditioning....
Every time you consume content, you get satisfaction, like the dog, every time the bell rings, he gets his food. This leads the dog to associate the sound of the bell with eating. Just as continually viewing content can end up replacing interest in having real relationships.
That human behavior can be explained with animals shows that we are not as special as we often think.
It is like the case of pigeons, which explain dopamine in social networks...
✍️ It's your turn: what other cases of classical conditioning do you know? Were you impressed by the experiment?
💭 Quote of the day: “Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will meet in your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations.” Brother Lawrence.
See you, take care! 👋
