At the risk of overgeneralizing, the year of 2020 was a strange time for everyone. Be it colossal or minute, most people experienced change in their daily lives. And change is, or can be, good! I once was given the phrase that “without discomfort, there is no growth” and I have held onto that for many years now, allowing the truth of it to manifest. Personally, within the span of six months, I quarantined due to a global pandemic, no longer went to work and saw students each day, my husband returned from a nine month deployment, we moved to a new state, I took a new, fully virtual job, and we got a dog (the best change of them all!). The stressful environment created by the coronavirus is one that has been challenging to navigate and taught me more than I could have predicted about empathy and the value of time. I have also been fascinated by the psychology of people and their reactions during this time, though before now I didn’t quite have the language to describe it. Recent reading for my graduate course about habits and behaviors, and specifically how we develop and change them, has given me a new understanding of the world around me. In her article on classical conditioning, Kendra Cherry (2019) writes that behaviorism is based on the assumption that all learning occurs through interactions with the environment and the environment shapes these behaviors. So considering the environment of the past year, it is no surprise that many behaviors have been shaped by it. Educational psychologist Thorndike’s proposed Law of Effect (as described by Resnick & Ford, 1981) tells us that actions with a more desirable outcome are more likely to be repeated. Throughout our lifetimes, we are conditioned to avoid getting sick. Being stuck at home with a stuffy nose, fever, and chills is not a pleasant experience, and most people have been sick at some point in their life. So a stimulus, say a person who coughs or sneezes or is visibly ill, causes a response, us creating distance to avoid that person’s germs and washing our hands as soon as we can. We’ve been conditioned to seek a negative reinforcer, not getting sick, to avoid positive punishment, catching a bug that makes us feel crummy. But with the coronavirus being more than “just a bug,” we’ve had to change our habits. This is hard, but not impossible, and hence part of why 2020 has been such a difficult one for many. Our old habit loops (Duhigg, 2012) may have looked something like this:
In The Power of Habit, Duhigg (2012) writes about how researchers learned throughout the twentieth century that the golden rule of changing a habit is to keep an old cue and reward while inserting a new routine that satisfies the craving. For example, The CDC encouraged quarantining and avoiding social gatherings, and it was shown as effective in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. This required people to ignore their craving for social interaction and the way they typically went about completing their daily tasks (grocery shopping, going to work in an office, etc). Many of us did quarantine and social distance, and the psychology of habit change helps explain why this was so hard! We were trying to suppress a craving and ignore cues, and therefore we weren’t getting the rewards we were used to. Asking people to wear a mask, however, allows for the craving to be satisfied with the same cue and reward. The change is in the middle of the habit loop - in the routine. Now, when I leave my house to go to the grocery store or on a stroll with my newly adopted dog, my routine includes putting on a mask. I make no claims that the problems we encountered as a country and a global community were solved when the clock struck midnight and we rang in 2021. We’re very much still in the trenches of a global pandemic, among many other challenges, but I am now able to put some of my feelings, observations, and understandings into words, and for me, that’s something. References
Cherry, K. (2019, September 5). Classical conditioning: How it works with examples. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/classical-conditioning-2794859 Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House. Resnick, L. B., & Ford, W. W. (1981). The psychology of mathematics for instruction. Routledge.
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Hi there!I'm Sarah! I have a passion for powerful teaching and lifelong learning. I am a 4th grade teacher turned instructional designer, and this is my blog documenting the journey. Click here to get in touch with me. Archives
February 2021
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