Conditioning

This topic has been pretty interesting for me. However, it is hard for me to believe that all activities are conditioned. Did our ancestors look for food because they had success looking for food in the past? I don't think so. They would have looked for food because they were hungry. However, there are many ways that they would have been conditioned in this respect. They would have realized that if there was growling behind them they should probably run because there was a viscous animal right behind them. This would be classical conditioning- associating the fearsome growl with an animal they would want to run from. Also, I'm sure there was much operant conditioning going on. If our ancestors were able to kill a rabbit with a spear by throwing it a certain way, then I'm sure they would repeat this action.

However, where my problem is with this whole thing comes from the last section we read about how genetics shapes a lot of these things. We are naturally predisposed to loud noises, like an animal growling behind us. We are not conditioned to be afraid of these things, we just are. If being afraid of an animal growling was not predisposed, would there be many people left to tell the tale? It is possible, however, that a child is taught that if they were to hear that certain growl that they needed to run. However, I'm not sure if I can attribute all of the reaction to classical conditioning- I am more inclined to attribute some of it to genetic makeup. As for the operant conditioning example, I think this can be more attributed to the conditioning, rather than the genetics. A person may try something new, but if it doesn't work they probably wouldn't try it again- they would keep modifying the procedure until it worked correctly. This is all in the process of learning and operant conditioning.