The comic strip (Stivers, 2010) brings on a quite important topic in psychology, that of Behaviorism which was studied by Watson, Skinner, and Pavlov (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, & Nock, 2014) in chapter one of Psychology. Behaviorism focused on how humans, as well as animals, act and in what ways environment can shape us (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, & Nock, 2014). Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychologist, wanted to examine behavior and how it can be influenced by surroundings by conditioning dogs to salivate when they would hear a specific sound (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, & Nock, 2014). This comic introduces a humorous approach to Pavlov’s behaviorism technique as it implies that it is the dog, not Pavlov, who is doing the conditioning.
