As food makes everyone hungry, I think that for me it is worse. Whenever I smell food or anything close to it like chips, cookies, or even the sound of water boiling; I start to salivate. I believe this is a result of Classical Conditioning, a theory that Ivan Pavlov invented. An example of this theory is hearing an ice cream truck’s melody then wanting ice cream, or if you hear the melody and there is not any trucks around, you still want ice cream because your mind is use to it.
Pavlov’s theory is a good illustration of why I smell food then become hungry. When I was six years old, my mother owned about five different restaurants and they all served food; my mind is used to the smell of freshly made food. Every time I was at the restaurant, my mother would serve me a big plate of mash plantain with fried cheese and that became my daily Dominican meal until this day. According to dictionary.com Pavlov’s “Classical Conditioning is a process of behavior modification in which a subject learns to respond in a desired manner such that a neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) is repeatedly presented in association with a stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus) that elicits a natural response (the unconditioned response) until the neutral stimulus alone elicits the same response (now called the conditioned response). For example, in Pavlov’s experiments, food is the unconditioned stimulus that produces salivation, a reflex or unconditioned response. The bell is the conditioned stimulus, which eventually produces salivation in the absence of food. This salivation is the conditioned response.”
My response to the smell of food is just like the Pavlov experiment. For me it is a bell, the smell itself, even a beep, like a microwave, that causes me to get hungry. I could be in the basement of my house, and if I smell stream or even smoke from the kitchen, I would start to salivate because I get hungry at the time. All it takes for me to get hungry is the sound of a bell or beep; I would start imagining smelling food even if it is not close by or not there at all. That is because I was always eating in the restaurants and now my mind has developed that strong urge for wanting to smell food.
While reading my Exploring Psychology textbook, I feel that like taste, smell is a chemical sense. We smell something when molecules of a substance carried in the air reach a tiny cluster of more than 5 million receptor cells at the top of each nasal cavity. Those receptor cells are closely tied to memory (166-67). My receptors cells would alert my brain and remind me about being a little kid, and sitting in my mother’s restaurant. Then I go into a daze and I see all the waiters rushing by me with freshly made food. I picture all the different types of food, shrimp with white rice, chicken soup, and lobster. Every time the food was done, the chief would ring the bell, DING! That is when my heart starts pounding and my sense of smell becomes sharper. It is these memories that are made through Classical Conditioning, which cause me to become hungrier at certain times.
Works Cited
“Classical Conditioning.” The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 23 Sep. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Classical Conditioning>.
Myers, David G. Exploring Psychology in Modules. New York: Worth, 2008.
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