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China’s Youth Are Quitting the Rat Race to ‘Let It Rot’ (www.wsj.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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Young people in China are becoming more rebellious, questioning their nation’s traditional expectations of career and family

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[–] 62 points 2 years ago (4 children)

One of the behavioralist psychologists, I think it was Pavlov, ran an experiment on dogs where he shocked them for both bad behavior good.

Eventually, the shocks had no effect.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    It was Martin Seligman who did dog shock experiments and developed the theory of learned helplessness in 1967. While Seligman demonstrated that learned helplessness did occur, we still don't know why learned helplessness occurs (especially in humans).

    Pavlov was much earlier (1897) and formed the theory of classical conditioning where a primary stimulus (food) was paired with a neutral stimulus (a bell) under the right conditions until the neutral stimulus would evoke a similar automatic response as the primary stimulus (e.g. drooling).

    What you are describing also sounds a little like operant conditioning, where a learned behaviour is reinforced or punished with the application or removal of a stimulus. Or in this case, where the link between a behaviour and a stimulus is eroded to the point where the learned link goes extinct, and the subject becomes desensitized to the repeated stimulus.

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