Classical Conditioning Influence On Coffee

Another factor, that I soon realised would play an extensive role in my constant thinking about coffee, where environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli are caused by classical conditioning during which a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus and caused a conditioned response (Moss & Dyer, 2010). In other words, I had started to associate certain neutral environments with coffee and so these environments caused my conditioned response of thinking about coffee, therefore, enhancing my craving for it. In a sense, I had conditioned myself to think about coffee in certain situations. Over the past three years, I have gone to the cafeteria to eat, but also to grab my coffee. If I had a class right after lunch or dinner I would bring …show more content…
One of them was Starbucks, while the other was my classes at 4040. I realised that when I went somewhere, like to go shopping at Tysons Corner, I had made it a habit to get some Starbucks coffee, when one was nearby. So when I did things on the weekends and a Starbucks was nearby, only the sight of it would remind me of coffee and invoke a craving for coffee. The cafeteria at 4040 was a similar situation. This semester I have many evening classes at 4040, and in order to not be late for my classes, I take the shuttle that runs 30 minutes before class. This, however, means that I arrive at 4040 with at least 15 minutes to spare before class. Before I started this project I would use this time to go to the cafeteria at 4040 and get a cup of coffee before class. After I started this project I was not allowed to do so anymore. However, the thought of having that extra time and going to my evening classes, again, invoked my craving for coffee. What I ended up doing was buying some other drinks at the cafeteria to both do something during the time before class, but also to have a substitute for coffee that I could drink during …show more content…
As I mentioned before, I am almost constantly dehydrated, which I know is bad for me, but it is what it is, and therefore, I tend to get headaches. Since my headaches, however, did not disappear when I drank enough water, I started to suspect that they might have been caused by my lack of caffeine. I do recall getting headaches before, when I also did not drink any coffee, but those headaches were easily helped by drinking a cup of coffee. This, being an example of a negative reinforcement in which an unpleasant stimuli (headache) is being removed and through this reinforces the behaviour (my coffee drinking) (Moss & Dyer, 2010). This time my only option was some medicine, but since I am not that fond of taking medicine for little things, like headaches, I did not. Lucky for me the headaches did start to subside and finally disappeared after a couple of