Wolfram Schultz Chapter 1 Summary

Chapter 2 outlines the work of Claude Hopkins and Wolfram Schultz, two men who fervently worked to create new cravings. Claude Hopkins utilized his methods to create a nationwide habit of oral hygiene. While, Schultz is responsible for studying how habits become cravings and how these craving affect the habit loop. This report will evaluate the roles of Hopkins and Schultz as they relate to habits controlled by craving as well as an explanation on why habits are not easily broken.
Claude Hopkins was an executive at the beginning of the 20th century who was responsible for the advertising of many of the daily innovative products Americans used at the time. Some of his biggest contributions to the field include the advertising of pepsodent, making it a household name and most importantly creating a habit out of regular oral hygiene. Before this time nobody
He utilized a monkey by the name of Julio who enjoyed blackberry juice. Julio would be responsible for touching a lever every time he saw shapes on the screen in front of him and by repeating this process he would get rewarded with juice. Julio would experience happiness every time he was rewarded and as the experiment began to vary (either by withholding or diluting the juice) the monkey would experience disappointment or anger (p. 47). Researchers also experimented with other monkeys who had not created a craving yet and noted that these could be easily distracted in comparison to monkeys who had created anticipation. In conclusion this experiment demonstrated why habits cannot be easily broken, because they are often subconsciously triggered and our brains automatically do the routine in order to get to the reward. Therefore, when changing a habit it is important to maintain a constant trigger and reward while modifying the routine (p.