Conditioning In Brave New World

Conditioning is concept that has been studied for decades. It was first explored by Russian Scientist Ivan Pavlov in 1849. Pavlov became interested in studying reflexes when one day he saw a set of lab dogs drooling at the sight of seeing scientist. They held no food but the dogs continued to salivate. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to the Scientist’s lab coats. Every time the dogs were fed, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs would react automatically as if food was on its way whenever they saw a person wearing a lab coat.
Pavlov tried to figure out how and why this response was occurring. In his experiment, he began to ring a bell every time the dogs were fed. If the bell was rung with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, the sound of the bell made the dogs respond by drooling. John Watson later identified this behavior to be known as Classical Conditioning, which explains the emotional responses to speech and actions to patterns of stimulus and response.
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The citizens of Brave New World are conditioned to a lot of subjects at a young age. This includes being comfortable with sexual activity, knowing their social caste place, and engaging in the use of soma when feeling sadness. While I do believe conditioning in today’s society shares similar views as of that in Brave New World, I do not think we are close to that extremity of conditioning. I believe the main difference between conditioning in Brave New World and today’s society is that condition is mainly using by companies trying to advertise their products, while in the novel it is used by the government as a means to brainwash its citizens. If the government starts this type of condition, there could definitely be negative consequences due to that fact that this conditioning could be used to change who we all are and how we operate from an early