Photo by Alex Nicolopoulos on Unsplash
Let me share with you guys a quick story which I went over the morning of my weekend which I found interesting and is related to habits.
A man named Edward conducted an experiment so that he could understand the foundation about how habits are formed. The person like to study the behavior of animals so he started working with cats.
To begin with, He would put the cats inside a device known as a puzzle box. The box was designed in such a way that the cat could escape through a door by simply pressing on a lever and once the door has been opened the cat could dart out and run over to the bowl of food in front of them.
Almost every cat wanted to escape as soon as they were placed inside the box. Some of them would poke their nose in corners of the bars, stick out their paws or claw on the loose objects available there. After exploring the box suddenly the cats would press the magical lever, it would open the door and they could escape.
He would track the behavior of cats, at first the cats would move around in a random but as soon as they pressed the lever the process of learning began. Progressively, each cat learned to associate the action of pressing the lever with the reward of escaping the box and getting the food in front of them.
After 20 to 30 trails, this behavior became so automatic that the cats could escape within few seconds of getting in. For instance, if the cats took around a min to escape at first few trials then with practice they could escape more quickly like around 6 seconds or even straight at the solution of getting it.
This story highlights one of the important lesson, which is:
Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.
Thank you for reading it till end, see you in the next article. Till then have a good day.