Bike Forums - Is Driving = Aversion Conditioning for hard-core commuters?

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- - Is Driving = Aversion Conditioning for hard-core commuters? (https://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/792638-driving-aversion-conditioning-hard-core-commuters.html)

Sometimes I truly enjoy driving -- like when the weather is icy, cold and rainy, pouring buckets, extremely windy. I don't have any qualms about driving on days like that because I've got nothing to prove, but I don't mind cold temperatures and light rain. However, 9 times out of 10 I get more enjoyment out of cycling to work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wphamilton (Post 13725318)

It's kind of an odd thought that seems reasonable to me so I thought I'd bounce it off the hard-core commuters here. I think that with bicycle commuting we inadvertently condition ourselves psychologically to associate unpleasant sensations with driving.

At first I would drive one day a week on average to rest, run errands or I'll admit it, just to feel like a normal commuter sometimes. As time went on that changed to the point where I'd only drive during the worst inclement weather. Thus driven commutes became exclusively unpleasant, slow, frustrating and dangerous. That peaked with me last year during the ice madness, a three hour ordeal.

By only driving when it is almost certain to be unpleasant, and almost always enjoying the bicycle commute, it seems to me to be, literally, a extended application of aversion therapy. Personally I get the unpleasant gut feeling when considering a drive to work, more so on the return leg. But not when driving to the supermarket, convenience store or anywhere else - those feel perfectly normal.

From wikipedia -

Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behavior.

It sounds exactly like my driving commutes. The stimulus is driving, the unpleasant sensations are those arising of the worst of driving conditions. What do you think? Do you, the hard-core commuter, have that unpleasant "aversion" feeling toward driving to work? Or have I just conditioned myself somehow in some unusual fashion?

Aversion therapy comes from the behavioral school of thought. When learning about it in my professional training it seemed overly simplistic to understand the human psyche. There are also a person's thoughts and perceptions to take into account, which are influenced by many experiences over a lifetime. For aversion to work it has to be viewed as unpleasant. By the way, aversion therapy is more time consuming and less effective than cognitive-behavioral therapy which takes more into account a persons thoughts and perceptions.

This is an interesting theory you propose, and it would appear in your situation you don't drive because of an aversion to it. But how much of it is due to the positive aspects of riding your bike. Driving for me is generally easier and faster, but I enjoy cycling more. Ride my bike because of what I benefit from it, not because of how much I dislike the alternative. I have found in general, that human beings remain motivated over time more by positive reinforcements than they do negative. Like how they say children respond better to positive feedback than negative. I love biking to work and only detest driving because it takes me away from cycling. Although when I got stuck in two hours of traffic jam last week on a day I had to drive, I really wished I was on my bike and I suppose that was an incident of aversion therapy. But most drives aren't like that and if I didn't already have a strong bias in favor of cycling, I don't think it would have really registered.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wphamilton (Post 13730779)

We're not discussing mental problems Jeff. I'm speculating that under some conditions we tend to psychologically condition ourselves to prefer cycling over driving, beyond the usual positive and negative reinforcements that we normally associate with it.

Nope -- it's just a matter of:

1.) different strokes for different folks;
2.) beauty is in the eye of the beholder (in this case, the beauty of the ride);
3.) people like what they like, there's no "conditioning" involved.

A general observation: after my years in uniform, I found that many of the things that stressed out so many people around me were, in fact, trifles; they just didn't exist in a world where you survived standing a guard post with an empty weapon during a terrorist threat. Conversely, things we were taught in the service made us regard personal conduct differently, and apathy to personal ethics, to THIS DAY (been out for 22 years) gets me a bit 'ruffled'. THESE are items that can be called "conditioning"; when someone rides a bike, discovers they like it more than driving, walking, or mass transit, that's not conditioning, that's personal enlightenment. With some (like me) the negatives that creep in -- weather, traffic, stupid comments from stupid people -- are not enough to tilt the scales the other way. Again, not conditioning. It's better called "the pursuit of happiness".

Quote:

Originally Posted by matimeo (Post 13734054)

I agree that our behavior is influenced by complicated sets of factors, many of which we are not consciously aware, and we'd likely be wrong to pinpoint a particular reason for a particular action. To take my theory any further than what we have here, someone would need to conduct a study including a large sample - which won't be me (I'm not that curious about it).

To be clear, I don't mind driving at all. I like to drive, I'm good at it, it feels completely natural. I just have a reluctance to drive to work, stronger than is objectively justifiable. (I do like my job, lest anyone wonders)

Breaking it down by what I see as potentially required to test my theory, the commuting alternatives have to be such that someone would almost always cycle when they could, but long enough and having the kind of traffic that would make driving unpleasant during the exceptions. Any interspersed enjoyable drives would void the process. In my case it's a very easy trip biking, a flat 9 miles of Greenway plus a mile of street where with a little timing I can avoid most if not all traffic. Almost ideal in that you'd seldom have a strong reason to skip a commute. Driving is through some of the heaviest Atlanta area traffic on a major throughway, normally congested but deadlocked during inclement weather due to inevitable accidents and breakdowns and inexperienced motorists. The drive (normally 15 or 20 minutes) takes 45 minutes to over an hour on the days I'd actually drive. Although not unique the disparity between the cycling and driving is unusual, so unfortunately there don't appear to be much potential for test cases.