Do yourself a real favour, why not wake up to me!
Ivan Pavlov was famous for conditioning dogs to respond to the sound of a bell and associate the sound with the possibility of food. By all accounts, Pavlov wasn’t too thrilled about becoming famous for this experiment as he had others that were far more exciting.
Apparently, he could play a 10-note chord on a piano and a conditioned dog could tell it was time for food. Play a near-identical 10-note chord with just one key difference and the dog would ignore it.
These were the pioneering moments in understanding how our behaviour and conditioning work together.
In many ways, we’ve all been conditioned to think ‘Pavlov’ when we hear a bell and see a dog running.
There has recently been a lovely piece of research that has looked at whether you’ve been conditioned by the sound of your morning ‘alarm clock’. It focussed on those people who wake up to an alarm noise that emanates from their mobile phone.
If this is you, then your conditioning has started.
The research looked at peoples’ reactions to their familiar alarm sound even when they were up and about. Even if they heard it by chance on the high street.
Even if you were in the office and it was played behind you. Most people noticed they reacted in the same way.
Low-level anxiety and a small amount of dread.
Unlike the dog that’s looking forward to food, it’s a noise that evokes a mixture of deep feelings.
And I can easily connect to this research.
Anyone who’s lived with a night shift worker probably can.
My wife was a midwife and often on rota for hilariously odd shift patterns.
Even to this day, if I hear the chimes of the morning alarm she used to have selected, my heart would sink. A rush of feelings and reactions simply from the sound of a morning alarm.
Why did this alarm condition me in such a way?
I think it’s because it would mean there was now a chance I couldn’t get back to sleep and children would potentially wake.
Not to mention that occasional light going on and off 400 times in the hunt for keys, ID badge and purse.
I fully appreciate that I've got the easy part in this story as I’m not the one disappearing in the middle of the night to deliver a baby.
It was years ago yet still to this day if I hear the alarm, a reaction kicks in.
There’s plenty of easy-to-spot conditioning for you to interrogate your own behaviour and programming.
The sound of an ice cream van for example.
The opening theme to Match of the Day. Dance music coming from a lowered Citroen Saxo that’s parked outside your house.
The sound of the Red Arrows before you actually see them in the sky.
A crying baby.
Pavlov was on to something that would pioneer an almost never-ending amount of research.
Still to this day the papers are full of studies and advice on how to change, improve, develop and calm your behaviour.
Pavlov was a remarkable scientist and researcher.
I would say this though.
If you want to avoid traumatising yourself with the sound of an alarm, then you can avoid all that pain by waking up with the radio.
Always different. Always there.
I can think of a station and a show that would be perfect!
No, it’s not about me! I’m just putting your mental health first.
It’s what Pavlov would have wanted.
If I hear the chimes of the morning alarm my wife selected, my heart would sink