Thursday, April 11, 2019
Controlled VS Automatic
In the section, "Controlled vs Automatic", in the book The Happiness Hypothesis, it brings up Pavlov and how he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Every time they heard the bell they were given food, so even when they weren't given the food, they still salivated at the sound of the bell. He conditioned the dogs to behave in this certain way, which became an automatic response for them. I thought this might be cool to share because I actually got to experience something similar in a psychology class back in high school. My teacher had a squirt bottle and he would say a series of words. On specific words, he would squirt the student in the face with the water. After a while of doing this, eventually, he stopped actually squirting them but kept going through the series of words to see what their reaction was. They would automatically flinch every time he said those keywords because they were expecting to get squirt in the face. I just find it interesting how little time it takes to condition someone to react to some sort of stimuli.
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I was in General Psychology last semester and loved learning about Pavlov. It is very interesting what our brains can be trained to do. When this subject gets brought up I always think about the tv show "The Office". In the show a character named Jim makes a sound on his computer and then immediately after he gives his desk mate,Dwight, candy. Jim continues to do this(as a prank) and then eventually makes the computer noise and does not give Dwight the candy, however; Dwight sticks his hand out waiting for the treat. Jim asks Dwight what he is doing and Dwight, himself was confused and stated that his mouth felt very dry. Even though it is a tv show, it gives a perfect outline of how conditioning works.
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