The Salivating Dog

Issa Khan
2 min readApr 6, 2021
Credit to Instagram.com/
alzearafat

In the Late 19th century a Russian scientist named, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, discovered something amazing in dogs. when a dog becomes hungry and sees food, its mouth releases saliva. Pavlov figured out a way to initiate that innate dog’s salivating response to hunger by conditioning his reflexes. He started ringing a bell every time he would feed his dog and after a couple of feedings later he was able to make the dog salivate without awarding him with food, merely by ringing the bell. This phenomenon occurred because the dog's brain associated the stimulus, bell ringing, with food hence every time a bell was rung, his brain concluded that food was present and signaled the release of saliva.

These findings were later used by communist Soviet Russia’s government to convert its citizens to full pledge communist sympathizers and force them to accept its totalitarian dogma. They believed that Pavlov’s Theory can be applied to humans as simple as ringing a bell for a dog. However, they did not take into account the complexity of human behaviors and its tendency for accruing knowledge, and its thirst for finding alternative realities. One can be successful in conditioning a human and reducing his world view to the potentate’s desires but only temporarily. Once the subject is returned to freedom, and no longer feels, threatened his senses kick in and inhibit all or most of the totalitarian doctrine.

--

--

Issa Khan

Pre-medical Student, who loves Psychology, History and Story telling