From Salivation to Code Creation: How Pavlov’s Dog Can Inspire Your Next Software Engineering Breakthrough
Surely we shouldn’t the users of our product to dogs…should we?!
Pavlov’s dog is one of the most famous experiments in the field of psychology. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, conducted a series of experiments in the late 19th century to study the digestive system in dogs. However, he stumbled upon a discovery that would revolutionize the field of behavioural psychology.
Pavlov noticed that dogs began to salivate when they heard the sound of a bell, even when there was no food present. He concluded that the dogs had learned to associate the sound of the bell with the arrival of food, and their response was a conditioned reflex.
This discovery of conditioned reflexes has significant implications in the field of software engineering. As software engineers, we are constantly creating programs that are designed to elicit specific responses from users. Just like Pavlov’s dog, users can be conditioned to respond to specific stimuli in a particular way.
