Conditioning

Like most people, I prefer to think that I have not been conditioned; however, this is just not the case. Since the day we were born we have been trained to respond certain ways to certain events. Like Pavlov’s dog, we all get hungry when we smell our favorite food even when we know we’re not going to have it. How does this happen to such “evolved” creatures? It’s quite simple. Our memory creates relationships between past experiences and future expectations. If it did not do this, we would have trouble with several simple aspects of everyday life.

                So now that we understand we are conditioned, how far does it go? All you have to do is go to any restaurant on a crowded day and watch a table that is receiving lousy service. At the end of the day, they will leave a tip just like everyone else even though they may have received horrendous service. It is just what we do. We leave tips after we eat, not because the service was fantastic but because we have been conditioned to leave one. The more often we experience this the more likely we are to do it again, which is why we have developed “standard tips”, usually a percentage of the bill.

                One interesting phenomenon related to conditioning is stimulus generalization, or when similar stimuli elicit conditioned responses. Pavlov noticed sometimes jingling keys would cause the dogs to start salivating the same as the bell did. This is called the Halo effect and contributes too many odd responses to situations. I personally have found myself doing this when saying goodbye to customers in a store. I generally say “Thanks for coming in have a great day” or something similar and have caught myself expecting them to say “you too” and started to respond to that before they even finish saying what they are saying which is not always “you too”. I find it odd that I anticipate everyone to say the same thing even though they have all been conditioned different and likely have different programmed responses to someone they do not know thanking them.

                Conditioning is a peculiar subject that explains much more about people than we realize on the surface. The more we watch, the more we see.

Below is an image of a tip calculator by Google that has a default setting of 15% which is exactly the average tip I leave and am willing to bet many of you do as well. Why you may ask: you have been conditioned