hjk5228 – Intro Psych Blog (F19)

Give Me Your Paw

Have you ever seen an animal complete an action that isn’t a natural behavior for them? Chances are you have, and as social media grows, more and more videos of animal doing these unusual actions are being shared with millions of people. Some of these videos can be as simple as a dog rolling over to as sophisticated as a grizzly bear playing a trumpet. If you’re like me, after seeing a video like this you probably wonder how the animal learned to do the action. I later found out that individuals use operant conditioning to get these animals to do something. Operant conditioning doesn’t only work on animals, it can also be used on humans. Operant conditioning is a method of learning where behaviors are either rewarded or punished. Through operant conditioning, a behavior and consequence are usually associated with each other. Usually if a desired behavior is performed, the subject is rewarded but, if an undesired behavior is executed the subject is punished. While operant conditioning may take some time for certain individuals it usually ends up being a successful method in the end. Operant conditioning is a very unique and common type of conditioning in everyday life.

Until I read about operant conditioning, I didn’t realize that I have actually done it many times. Without knowing it, years ago I conditioned my dog through operant conditioning to perform different tasks. As a little kid I thought it would be cool if my dog was able to shake hands and roll over, so I tried to teach her how to do these actions. Originally it didn’t work at first, then I started bribing her with treats while trying to teach her these concepts. Eventually after about a month of consistent training and rewarding her with treats for a successful behavior she would roll over and shake hands with you. I didn’t know it, but I was slowly shaping my dog to complete these actions. By rewarding my dog with treats, it reinforced the behavior I was trying to get her to complete. This behavior didn’t go extinct later on either, throughout her whole life whenever she was about to be given a treat naturally, she would go to shake your hand which I found pretty cool. This personal experience helped me understand how easy and common operant conditioning actually is. Unfortunately, my dog is gone now but I will always have fond memories of her thanks to operant conditioning.

Memory Implanting

Have you ever had a memory of something then it turns out you weren’t even there? While this seems extremely impossible, it can actually happen! This is called implanting memories. Implanting memories is when individuals are given enough details and are reassured by another individual that the event occurred, people will believe they took part in that event. Or if somebody heard a story so many times, they can also believe they partook in that event also. I find this extremely interesting that you can implement a memory into somebody’s. This was tested by Hyman & Billings in 1998. They first obtained real memories about the individual, they then asked about five different memories. Four of those memories actually occurred and one had not occurred and was made up. They would then ask about the memory days later and usually the individual would remember the event which was made up. I find this very interesting that people can just create memories for others but, thinking back on it I have experienced it myself.

In high school my friend group would do everything together. Sometimes individuals who were busy would miss out because they were busy. As time would pass after events and stories of it would be told, I started to notice that people who weren’t there would be able to tell the story. Not just summarize the story either, they would be able to tell every detail that happened like they were there. I just assumed that they had FOMO and wanted to fit it. It wasn’t until the class covered the lesson on memory that I realized what was happening. I soon realized why this was occurring and that the individuals heard the story so much and that the passing of time lead them to remember the events even though they were there. By repeatedly telling the stories we were actually implanting memories into the individuals who didn’t attend. This wasn’t intentional and I now find this very fascinating. I thought it was just a rare occurrence but finding out its actually a common event really changed how I look at my friends now. I myself have had memories implanted into my head because I have heard about, they so much, I just knew they weren’t true because they occurred while I was participating in something else that I remembered. While it might not seem like it, this is how easy it is to implement a memory into somebody’s head.

Fight-or-Flight

Have you ever been in a situation where you were forced to fight-or-flight? You can thank a part of your autonomic nervous system for that. The autonomic nervous system is split into two divisions. These two divisions work together and maintain normal body function. One is the parasympathetic nervous system which calms a person through relaxing the nerves in their body (rest and digest). The parasympathetic nervous system usually comes into action after the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system returns blood pressure, the breathing rate and hormone flow all return to equilibrium after it is changed due to stressful situations. The other is the sympathetic nervous system, which is located in the spine and stimulates the nerves and gets them ready to either fight-or-flight and is what we are going to focus on today. When put into a stressful or dangerous situation, the body releases a flood or hormones which boosts the bodies alertness and heartrate and sends extra blood to the induvial muscles. The persons breath rate increases, delivering more fresh oxygen to the brain along and glucose is released into the bloodstream as a boost of energy. Most of the time people do not even realize these responses are taking place.

In my lifetime I have experienced many situations where my sympathetic nervous system played a huge role and I was in a fight-or-flight moment. I am from Northeast Pennsylvania where I spend a lot of my time out in the woods hunting. Hunting season in NEPA usually runs from the fall into winter. My fight-or-flight moment happened in the fall, when I was hunting out of a tree stand. The day before, somebody harvested a deer at the location I was hunting and left the scraps in the woods. I saw them and thought nothing of it and got in the tree stand and sat there for hours. Just before dark it sounded like someone threw a boulder down the hill behind me, and I could feel my adrenaline start pumping because I thought it was going to be a group of deer and my season would be over that night. Unfortunately, that group of deer ended up being a large adult black bear who was looking for a meal while bulking up for hibernation. I didn’t know what to do at that point, I could feel my body change as the feeling of danger overcame me. All I saw was a large bear towering high on its hind legs trying to locate the bloody deer carcass that was fifty yards in front of me. I didn’t know what danger felt like until it was ten yards away from a hungry bear in a twelve-foot-high tree stand with only a bow and three arrows. At that moment there was no thinking, my body was instantly preparing me for the worst and telling me to get out of the area or if I had to, to try and eliminate the threat and fight for my life. The bear made a beeline to the gut pile and started ripping it apart, I figured that was my opportunity and I climbed out of the tree and quickly walked out of the woods.

At that time, I didn’t realize it until my parasympathetic nervous system started to calm me down, but my sympathetic nervous system was playing a huge role in that experience. It immediately took over and started making my body do things I didn’t realize I was doing until I was out of that situation. When I later thought about it, I felt the adrenaline flowing, my heart beating crazily out of chest, my body stared pouring sweat, and my breath rate was through the roof. And this is just one major situation, I’m sure we experience situations where both systems come into play weekly. We should be grateful these systems exist, because they play a huge role in human survival, and without them who knows where we would be.

Sources:

Complete Autonomic Nervous System Management for Any Coach. (2019, July 11). Retrieved from https://simplifaster.com/articles/autonomic-nervous-system/

Fight or Flight: The Sympathetic Nervous System. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/65446-sympathetic-nervous-system.html