I tend to refer to a person as a human rather than a person. For example, just yesterday I was asking a friend of mine to find someone to attend a group event and the conversation went something like this: "Are you just looking for someone to come with you?" he asked and I respond with "No, I need another human." The trend of calling people humans has been prevalent for at least two years, but I was called out on it a few months ago, which made me question this behavior. Someone said that I called people human to create distance between me and them, which made me curious as to where the origin of this behavior might come from. There was no apparent problem with calling others human, until I realized that others would perceive it as an attempt to distance myself. Thus, I would like to formulate a method to reduce the tendency to view people as human and determine the potential ways in which Pavlovian, classical, and operant conditioning have affected this behavior. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The most likely origin of this behavior is that I saw a person, probably in a movie, use the word "human" quite frequently. , and what followed was laughter and I began to associate the stimuli. Based on classical conditioning, this would be trace conditioning, because the conditioned stimulus, in the word “human,” precedes the unconditioned stimulus, laughter. The unconditioned response would be happiness and the conditioned response would be the desire to use the word “human.” Because I am quick to make connections, the CS-US contingency would not need to be very frequent for me to associate the stimuli, perhaps only after seeing 3-5 different people use "human" followed by laughter would have been enough for me. Along with that, I probably saw the CS-US pairs while watching a movie/show, and because I was excited, I was able to learn the behavior faster. However, this is not the only way of classical conditioning that this behavior could have initially trained. . Higher order conditioning could also train this behavior. For example, a conditioned stimulus, considered something as clever, was previously associated with the unconditioned stimulus, funny, which had the unconditioned response of being happy. So the conditioned response likes intelligence. In the movie/show where I saw the character use the word "human", I associated this conditioned stimulus with intelligence, which was perceived based on the context of the scene. This would also be trace conditioning, because the conditioned stimulus of using the word “human” precedes the conditioned stimulus of thinking he was intelligent. Then, once the “human” conditioned stimulus has been associated with the intelligence-conditioned stimulus, which is already associated with the unconditioned stimulus, funniness, the “human” conditioned stimulus would be sufficient to elicit the unconditioned response, being happy. The conditioned response to the use of the word “human” would then be the desire to use the word “human.” On the other hand, based on operant conditioning, behavior and use of the word “human” increases when the stimulus, laughter, is presented. That is, when I used the word "human", people found it strange, but nonetheless funny and laughing, which reinforced the behavior for me to use "human" again. So the behavior is.