Bribery

A big topic that involves motivation and sparked an interest to me is bribery. I never thought about bribery as a motivation, but just a reward. Now, when I think of this, I think about how individuals are bribed as motivation to get something in return. The reward increases the likelihood of the behavior or action, which is a reinforcer. Reinforcers increase the frequency of the behavior. I began to think about when parents bribe their children to do something. For example, Common bribes are to clean your room or eat your vegetables in return for something positive. A website I found thought that parents should not bribe their children. 22% of individuals said parents should bribe their children, while 78% said not to. The individuals that said yes explained it was acceptable within reason. They saw it as a way to help them learn and said it was a motive to get them to do their best. The ones that said no said it is damaging and does not teach them responsibility. They believe that bribery doesn’t teach children to be motivated on their own. I can see how it might be compared to an incentive. This motivates a behavior to occur.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-parents-bribe-their-children

credit: https://www.kidpower.org/library/article/safe-unsafe-bribes/

Tonic Immobility

Tonic immobility is a natural state of paralysis which animals enter. This is similar to hypnosis. The species that I thought was the most interesting to learn about was the tonic immobility of sharks. It can be induced by stimulating the tiny sensory pores on their snout. Tonic immobility is primarily used by researchers to subdue sharks so they can study them without struggling and threat of injury. One animal that uses tonic immobility to its advantage is the orca. Research suggests that orcas may have mastered how to induce tonic immobility among sharks. Orcas also use this technique when hunting stingrays as well. Mastering this skill has lead to a large increase in successful orca attacks on sharks. 

http://awesci.com/killer-whales-ingenious-trick-to-kill-sharks/

Taste Aversion

Taste aversion is defined as the strong dislike for a particular food due to the association of taste and smell with nausea. Growing up, my all time favorite food was pizza. I ate pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every time I was exposed to pizza, I had nothing but positive experiences. However, years ago I got the stomach flu and could not eat for days. One day, my parents came home with a pizza and all I could think about was how much I loved pizza and how empty my stomach was. Despite how sick I felt, I ate the pizza anyway. As soon as I finished my slice of pizza, I immediately got sick. Although I knew that my sickness was caused by my stomach flu, I could not help but to associate the taste of that pizza with instant sickness. Weeks later, I ordered a pizza from that same pizza shop, but I couldn't even stomach one bite because all I could think about was getting instantly sick. To this day, I still cannot eat pizza from that specific pizza shop.