Be Mindful of the Habits you Reinforce

Because on Some Level, We Are Dogs

Are you familiar with the story of Pavlov's dog?

It's not a fable, but a scientific experiment, complete with a hypothesis, methods, and results. The findings show that if you pair a neutral stimulus, such as the sound of a bell – Ding! – with a potent stimulus, such as the appearance of food, the neutral stimulus alone becomes enough to trigger the potent reaction. “Potent” here means that the thing will naturally trigger a reaction.

In the case of the lab rats — err, lab dogs, though not necessarily lab-radors — in this experiment, this meant that the chime of the bell caused the dogs to salivate in anticipation of food, even when the food was not presented.

While no dogs were harmed in the conducting of this experiment, I suspect that some were quite disappointed to find that they were in the bell-only experimental group.

So, you may be thinking, Cute dog, but why should I care?

That’s a fair question! It’s always good to look at patterns and phenomena within the context of their impact on yourself, your life, and how you can use them to your advantage. You should care about behavioral conditioning, specifically, because the same patterns occur in people. An otherwise-innocent stimulus or action can become unintentionally paired with a less-than-desirable reaction or behavior.

The lesson Pavlov's dogs teach us is that we associate stimuli with the results we've gotten in the past, regardless of our current experience. These associations are formed over time simply by repeating some behavior on the same cue – a time of day, location, person, or activity. It doesn’t matter whether the stimulus in itself is initially neutral or potent. A neutral stimulus can be tied to a new behavior, and an already potent stimulus can become tied to an alternative or additional reaction.

The good news is that we can train ourselves using this phenomenon intentionally, and that bad associations can be untrained, too. We can use these patterns to our advantage, or allow them to be to our detriment. That choice is up to you.

Positive and Negative Reinforcement

The association between the bell and the salivation is created through classical conditioning, a term which simply means that the neutral stimulus is presented before the behavior. While conditioning is not quite the same thing as reinforcement, the two go hand in hand. Behavioral reinforcement will be the tool you use to manipulate your own habits, cultivating a series of natural behaviors that allows you to coast in the right direction when you inevitably perform some behaviors on autopilot.

The terms surrounding reinforcement get a little dense, so I’ll give an overview. The two axis to behavioral conditioning are reinforcement vs punishment, and positive vs negative. The two dimensions combined create four possible categories, as depicted below.

One could call Pavlov’s experiment one of positive reinforcement, since the drooling is reinforced through the addition of food. Normally, you would save reinforcement for behaviors that you actually want to see more of, but scientists are an odd bunch.

To be absolutely clear, the positive and negative do not necessarily mean good or bad, pleasant or painful. Positive means something was added, and negative means something was removed. In both cases, the goal is to influence the target behavior.

Positive Reinforcement: If you finish your homework, you can play video games. This is positive, because if the desired behavior is completed (homework) the subject gets an added reward (video games).

Negative Reinforcement: If you feed your dog, he will stop whining. This is negative because in reaction to the desired behavior (feeding the dog), a stimulus is removed (annoying noise). Umm… in this case, the dog is training you. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Do you ever say a word over and over until it loses all meaning, and you start to wonder how the word ever made sense in the first time? Trying to put labels on the stimuli of behavioral conditioning is kind of like that.

The lines start to blur when you think about it for too long. If you say that your kid can’t have dessert unless they eat their vegetables, that sounds like negative reinforcement, since the dessert is being removed. If you reward the kid with dessert for eating the vegetables, that sounds more like positive reinforcement, since the reward is added. If the dessert is assumed to be in the child’s future, and it is withheld as a punishment to deter the behavior of ignoring their vegetables, I could now see it as negative punishment which is decreasing a behavior through removal of a stimulus.

By twisting the words and emphases, it’s possible to make an argument for multiple classifications of what kind of behavioral conditioning is being described. In some examples it’s pretty clear, but scientists even argue amongst themselves over others examples, as you can see here.

What matters for our purposes is that you can assess your own behaviors, recognize when something is reinforcing or deterring a behavior, and understand your own motivations enough to correct as needed.

A More Relatable Pavlovian Bell

Since most of us aren't ringing a dinner bell for our pets, here’s another example with which many of you may be all too familiar. It’s important to note that associations are not only formed through rewards. They are also commonly formed due to the removal of an unpleasant or stressful stimulus, as in this example.

The Amazon delivery person approaches the door. My dogs perk up at the first hint of movement outside. They growl. They jump onto the couch, desperate to see out the window. Even if the blinds are closed, they stare through the narrow gaps for a glimpse of the intruder.

When they are certain there's a person nearby, the barking commences. They run to the door, ready to defend the house from what must be a dire threat.

With a thump, the package lands on the front stoop – Ding!

Maybe the sound is the doorbell, or maybe it’s the subtler chime of the delivery person’s scanner.

No matter the source, on the other side of the door, the dogs go crazy.

The threat is so close! Their relentless barking strives to strike fear into the heart of whatever burglar, scoundrel, or creep lurks on the other side of the door.

The delivery person, oblivious to the plight of the rambunctious pups inside, turns and leaves. His job is done.

Hearing the threat retreat, the dogs believe they've succeeded. "I sure showed him," they might think. I don't speak dog, but this is my best guess at the self-satisfied look they give me after barking away the imagined threat.

The stress of the unknown was the negative stimulus that the dogs experienced in this case. The inevitable removal of that stimulus after their barking functions as a negative reinforcement, despite the two being totally unrelated.

They believe that they have scared away the potential threat by barking, which is in itself a reward to the dogs. For all they know, the only reason they and their humans survived the situation is that they courageously drove off the intruder. They did a good thing. Their instinct to bark is reinforced, behaviorally conditioned at the otherwise neutral stimuli of passersby outside the home.

And Now, A Human Example

In the same way that the dogs reinforce their reaction to harmless sounds, a person with anxiety may reinforce their fear of harmless situations.

To be clear, there are some anxieties and phobias that go beyond self-treatment. Consider your own situation and whether its intensity requires professional intervention. Don’t put yourself in real danger to conquer anxiety.

When someone suffers from social anxiety, they are fighting with their own subconscious belief that social or interpersonal situations are dangerous. Their fear and anxiety flare when they are faced with the possibility of an overly demanding social situation. The person may avoid parties or crowded restaurants, unaware that their avoidance causes their fear to deepen over time.

Upon receiving an invite to what they know will be a large social gathering – Ding! – the subject feels an immediate spike in anxiety.

The invitee might come up with a lame excuse to decline the invitation – or it could be a good excuse. Who knows how creative my hypothetical anxious person is?

Either way, they avoid the situation, and the offending anxiety is relieved. Because the person did not face their fear and attend the event, the part of their brain that triggers the fear*, often called the fight-or-flight center, is encouraged. How is the brain to know that triggering the fear isn’t precisely what saved them from the perceived threat? This was the right move, it will believe.

Thus, the sufferer of anxiety is reinforcing in their subconscious that the social event was a danger, and that avoiding it was the only way to remove the anxiety.

*The fear-center is located in a part of the brain called the amygdala, for the nerds in the crowd. Don’t worry, I’m one too.

Just like the dogs, the anxious person’s avoidance of social events is encouraged by the dissipation of their anxiety upon declining the event, a negative reinforcement. The event likely held no real danger for our anxious person, and when they aren’t gripped by the jaws of their condition, they likely know it. Still, every instance of avoiding another social event comes with the reward of relieving the immediate anxiety. Over a long time, this causes the anxiety to build in intensity, making it a more challenging obstacle the longer you go without dealing with it.

Conditioned Behaviors are More Common Than You Think

In both my dog and human hypotheticals, the stimulus was fear or anxiety, which resulted in negative reinforcement. If we remember our drooling friends from Pavlov’s experiment, it’s clear that the same conditioning pattern applies to positive associations as well. In these cases, an added pleasant stimuli after the behavior creates an urge or craving rather than an instinct for avoidance.

For the dogs, drooling on command may not be the most impressive trick, but at least it doesn’t cause any real harm. For a human, there are infinite associations that you might develop which can become obstacles to attaining the life you want.

• Associating your arrival home with pouring a drink or grabbing a beer
• Associating weekday evenings with binge-watching TV
• Associating every sound that your phone makes with needing an immediate response
• Associating the weekend with going out partying or drinking
• Associating watching TV with snacking
• Associating the inability to focus on work with needing a coffee, a cigarette, a chat at the water cooler, or the digital equivalent
• Associating a conversation with your spouse with an inevitable fight
• Associating social situations with stress
• Associating the doctor’s or dentist’s office with fear and pain

That isn’t to say that all of either the behaviors listed above or their stimuli are inherently good or bad. It’s just that when these become unconscious associations, rather than a chosen behaviors, they can be detrimental.

For example, if you eat every time you watch TV, then the act of sitting down in front of the TV – Ding! – will cause you to feel hungry, or least, snacky. You may even feel your saliva glands triggering in anticipation of some salty snack. Hmm… How Pavlovian of you.

Start to pay attention to behaviors like these as well as the stimuli that trigger them. These stimuli include arriving home, a noise from your phone, and even the strain you might feel when trying to focus. Be aware that stimuli might not always be as obvious as the – Ding! – of your phone ringing. Locations, times of day, or even people can act as cues for behavioral conditioning as well.

You might have a friend with whom you just happen to drink alcohol every time you hang out. Maybe it’s because that particular friend is stressful and drives you to drink, but more likely it’s a habit that neither one of you has ever acknowledged or intended, and it “just kind of happened.”

If you initially bonded with this friend over a football match at a bar or a shared love of fine wines, it might make sense that you often drink while spending time together, but it’s worth asking yourself what that friendship might look like with some non-drinking events mixed in.

If you commute, arriving home from work is another behavioral stimulus to watch out for. What do you do when you walk in the door? A common stereotype is that someone gets home and grabs a beer from the fridge, the act of drinking signifying the end to the work day and the start of relaxation. You might also stop at your favorite bar on the way home, or perhaps just plop yourself on the couch upon arriving home. Not to be too focused on the negatives – you could be someone who hits the gym most days after work, as well!

Reinforced Behaviors to Approach with Caution

There are some behaviors for which the deck is stacked against us when it comes to making objective choices. The first one that comes to mind is drinking alcohol. However, one could say the same thing for cigarettes, television, social media, and processed food. Some of these are harmless when in balance, but all of them give us a dopamine hit, either through chemically addictive agents or through cleverly engineered algorithms designed to keep us engaged.

The issue of alcohol is particularly tricky since the substance itself boosts your dopamine levels. It comes as its own reward. Every time you drink, your brain is going to believe it was a good thing, even if you didn’t have that good of a time. This paired with the many societal stimuli that push us toward drinking – advertisements, movies, events, happy hours, open bar events, social lubricant, celebration, commiseration, fraternities – make this one very difficult to avoid.

I would have to say that technological distraction is the next biggest danger, in my personal ranking, but as a software engineer, I may be biased. With digital distractions, the stimulus comes many times throughout the day.

We feel a little tingle in the back of our mind, You should check your phone – Ding! Of course, when you pick it up, there are 11 notifications, and there’s your dopamine again, an addictive hit of positive reinforcement.

Then, often just as you are settling back into work – Ding! – you need coffee, your brain prods. If you give in to the urge and step away from the stress of whatever problem you were working on, you immediately get the negative reinforcement caused by relieving that stress. Well, at least delaying the stress through procrastination. Shortly thereafter, the enjoyment of a hot cup of coffee and the dopamine release of caffeine (unless you’re one of those decaf people) provides another dose of positive reinforcement to your distracted mind.

Okay, that’s enough brain personification.

It’s a simple, repeatable formula. Get a craving, eat a cookie. The brain gets the reward of a sugar-fueled dopamine rush and associates the cravings with it, so you get them more often.

The only way to prevent yourself from rewarding this kind of “bad behavior” is by pushing through the discomfort of the lack of motivation. Give yourself an external trigger, such as a timer or a deliberate stopping point in the work, then force yourself to continue working until that point is reached.

If this is something you struggle with often, consider using a productivity tool such as a pomodoro timer, which allows you a break after each short segment of dedicated work time. Once you make it to your external trigger, you can even allow yourself the desired reward that you had been craving earlier. Let your brain who’s in charge.

Why Are Some Behaviors So Hard to Resist

As Dave Asprey, the father of the biohacking movement, explains, our bodies and minds have evolved to make us fat and lazy. Prehistorically, if we were able to succeed while expending less energy, we were more likely to survive. The more of our daily tasks we could perform on autopilot, the less energy we had to expend making decisions. The conserved energy was literally a matter of life and death, since the extra energy could be used foraging for food, building shelter, or running away from a sabertooth tiger.

These days, those skills aren’t in very high demand, and more people than not have an excess of food and distinct lack of reasons to run. Therefore, the inclination to conserve energy is no longer useful, though our biology is still efficient to a fault. In fact, studies have indicated that most people operate on autopilot for anywhere from 40% to 95% of their waking lives. If you find yourself frequently doing things without really thinking about them, you aren’t broken. You’re functioning exactly as your biology intends.

Unfortunately, we have to go against some parts of our biology in order to become our best selves. This is one of those cases.

Because of the care I put into choosing my habits, it can be jarring when I catch myself not thinking. It’s a weird feeling, because I know that a part of me wants to continue on autopilot. I sometimes call it “cavewoman brain.”

Since this is literally a survival method, it feels dangerous to resist. The other part of my mind, the part that I would call my “self,” realizes that I haven’t put the proper consideration into my behavior and raises a flag, giving me the opportunity to shift and combat the conditioning.

I felt this autopilot script kick in the other day walking into a Trader Joe’s, when a guy sitting at a table outside asked if I was registered to vote – Ding!

The entrance to my usual grocery store often has one of those tables set up out front with someone trying to sell you cable. I don’t believe anyone actually wants cable anymore, with the prevalence of streaming services, and yet… there they sit.

I’ve mostly trained myself — intentionally — to identify this table and ignore it, walking past without stopping or making eye contact, and tossing out a metered, “No. Thank you,” if the rep calls out to me.

My initial inclination at the guy in front of Trader Joe’s was to wave him off but some part of my brain went, That’s not the cable guy!, so I paused. “Yes, I am registered to vote,” I replied, thinking that might be the end of it.

It wasn’t.

He was seeking some signatures for two petitions, but after some consideration, I signed both. It took only a moment, and I was off to my merry grocery-shopping way, pleased that on this day, I could say for sure that I was being intentional.

My reason for highlighting this instance isn’t to encourage you to stop for strangers at tables outside of stores, but to be aware of why you are passing them by. An occasional examination of your motivations is all it takes. If you know you have a reason for your behavior, then you’re on the right track.

Intentional Behavioral Conditioning

I try very hard not to develop habits by accident.

If I am doing something the same way I’ve always done before, it damn well better be the thing that makes sense in my current circumstance.

In my experience, this is a pretty rare philosophy. I know it seems like a lot, when you haven’t been living your life this way as long as you can remember. If you start, I promise it gets easier. You begin to make decisions faster. You evaluate the effects and impacts of your choices more efficiently, and the cognitive load of making decisions lightens.

You don’t need to be analyzing every single behavior, either. That would become exhausting quickly, and who’s got time for that? Instead, the idea is to become aware of your behaviors, triggers, and motivations and gradually improve them.

Regularly examine the impacts they have. Develop an instinct for when your autopilot might not be serving you, and when you feel that ping of cognitive dissonance, listen to it and put that behavior on trial.

The bottom line is that you can be aware of the habits you are forming and be very deliberate about which behaviors you allow yourself to reinforce. Try to recognize both your stimuli and the rewards that follow in order to master your own conditioning and train yourself to be a really good boy. Sorry… I couldn't resist.

In order to enhance positive associations, you can tie the completion of behaviors you want to encourage to a positive reward. When you finish a page of writing, you can take a break for a coffee. If you can remain in deep focus for 30 minutes, allow yourself to get a snack. Start these targets at a level that is difficult, but attainable, and gradually increase the amount you must do to earn your reward.

When training a dog, you initially give the reward every time they perform the behavior, and gradually reduce the number of treats until the behavior can happen without reward. On some level, we are just like dogs.

You can also add a penalty to bad behaviors, a technique called positive punishment if the punishment is something added, and negative punishment if something is taken away. Ever heard of a swear jar? It’s kind of like that, but for when you check your phone when you should be working or spending time with family.

Even better, remove things that may become stimuli, once you identify them. Leave your phone in another room and put snacks that may cause cravings on a high shelf out of sight. For the inverse effect, make the stimuli for positive behaviors more apparent. More on that in a later article, though.

I’ve put a lot of research time into understanding how our various habits can be formed, sculpted, and chosen. I do what I can to promote good habits and make them easier to pick up, but I put just as much effort into being vigilant against the formation of detrimental habits. I plan to write more on these subjects in the future, so feel free to check back, or subscribe to Ever Intentional to get notified when new articles come out.

If you’d like to dig into these subjects more today, my first recommendation would be to listen to a few of my favorite habit-related interviews on the podcast Feel Better, Live More. One recommendation would be the interview with Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, and the other is Shane Parrish, who describes carefully choosing and programming your habits as “living on easy mode”. According to Shane, making all the small decisions to increase your health, energy, and preparation for various challenges on a daily basis allows you to breeze through obstacles that would otherwise be challenging.

Both are worth listening to, and have quite different recommendations and techniques. Try any advice that resonates with you, at least for a time, and keep what sticks.

If you reinforce your good habits and stay wary of the bad ones, you train yourself over time to do the things that are better for you by default, making those feel less demanding as they become second nature. Find ways to penalize or reduce anything that contributes to reinforceable negative behaviors. Above all, stay aware of the behaviors you want to reinforce and monitor yourself for these patterns. If you’re not where you want to be in life today, these will be the first steps to starting to transform yourself into the person who lives and thrives in the life you envision.