I did not reflect upon behaviorism until I was asked to read Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog for my internship working with dolphins this summer. It did get me back on track with a theory that I had not looked at for a while, considering behaviorism is not all that popular in the human psychology department at Cornell (which is fine, I guess). But lately, I’ve been coming back to the typical thing you hear everywhere when you start studying this school of thought: Our society, as a whole, is a wonderful web of stimuli and rewards.

Which is fine, too. It makes sense to be trained this way if the system we’re getting into works like this. Mouse presses bar, mouse gets fed. I work, I get paid. You work, you get paid. We both study well, we get good grades. Pay bills, don’t get fined. Pet a cat, it purrs. So far, so good.

Go to a student meeting, get free food. Give us your input, you get extra points. Do volunteer work, get rewarded with money. Come to my party, you’ll get a free gift. Don’t complain and you won’t get fired. Now, it starts getting a little out of hand.

Because positive reinforcement is an excellent training paradigm, and humans are excellent at learning stuff, we might be getting trained for the wrong things. Specifically, the training Anglo North American society seems to give us allows interest as motivation to be out of the equation. What is nasty about this is that, suddenly, we find ourselves expecting rewards for things that didn’t need to be rewarded before, because the activities were rewarding in themselves. We start doing volunteer work to build up our resumes more than to actually help people. We join student associations for the things that they give us instead of what the associations stand for. We take course X because the reward is to be a PreMed or PreVet or PreLaw or whatever, instead of taking other courses that we actually care about. And in that mumbo-jumbo of rewards that were not supposed to be given, we somehow have lost the ability to care for things for their own sake.

Of course there’s a lot of upsides to those rewards. I like being able to volunteer instead of working for pay all the time. I like getting food in meetings because it allows for nice conversations in between things. And fulfilling the requirements and getting your prize is always nice — we actually are great at feeling proud of ourselves. But I am afraid that my interest in things dwindles because I am being trained not to be interested. That people might not go to a nice conference because they’re not getting points for it. That social events that don’t count towards anything are less popular if it’s individuals, and not organizations, making them. That labels are more important than characteristics, and actions only happen if you get something other than gratitude for making them.

It seems that we move ourselves through obligation and rewards that were unnecessary before. Maybe that’s why doctors or teachers start to have a bad rep. Or why people invest less and less time making friends — or keeping them. We expect to be rewarded with something else, as if just doing the task well does not cut it. Satisfaction is not part of the equation.

As we get more prepared for life, we start believing our time is worth more and more and smaller things stop being “worth our while.” People seem to enjoy things less (or maybe I just didn’t notice people not enjoying things when I was younger?) and seem to have more problems every time. Look at the depression statistics and how they’ve started piling up in the last 10 years or so. Look at the number of people sitting alone at cafeterias. They seem to be rules more than exceptions.

Look at the number of people that go help others just for helping’s sake. At people that play with children that are not their own without getting paid. At the people that go to nursing homes and speak to older people about their lives and actually have fun and leave with smiles on their faces. They start to be exceptions more than rules.

It’s asking for too much, I know. And I live it first-hand many times. I find myself only doing those things that can earn me something, because I am too pressed for money/good grades/good rep to just do something for the fun of it. It scares the hell out of me.

And the lower you go in the social scale, the more this should be the case, it seems. But it’s not. Have you noticed? Maybe it’s because there’s a more modest idea of what is worth a person’s time. I want to understand and believe more in that.

There are movements starting to counter this: the studies of positive psychology and happiness that tell you that being happy is more important than being successful. The money curves stating that, after a certain bracket, more money does not mean more happiness. The studies saying that having friends is an important stress buffer. That an enriched environment not only makes you smarter, but healthier and happier. The incredible movements that are starting over the net like couchsurfing or microloans. Even religion can be a good option if it is properly managed.

There’s people asking this same question and trying to change it. But they’re still exceptions. An acquaintance last week, while talking about U.S. politics, said that there are a lot of organizations here, but that, as a country, the U.S. has an undeniable lack of social willpower. I’m not debating or countering that, since I’m not big on wanting to change a country’s state of mind. I am, however, interested in understanding how we get people, everyday people, the educated people worldwide that have more than the rest of the world combined, back to caring.

Any ideas?

Florencia Ulloa is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She may be reached at fulloa@cornellsun.com. Innocent Bystander appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.