Shark Bait | A Story Of Human Behaviours

 

Shark Bait

During a search experiment a marine biologist placed a shark into an outsized holding tank then released several small bait fish into the tank. As you'd expect, the shark quickly swam round the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish.

The marine biologist then inserted a robust piece of clear fiberglass into the tank, creating two separate partitions. She then put the shark on one side of the fiberglass and a replacement set of bait fish on the opposite .

Again, the shark quickly attacked. this point , however, the shark slammed into the fiberglass divider and bounced off. Undeterred, the shark kept repeating this behavior every jiffy to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around unharmed within the second partition. Eventually, about an hour into the experiment, the shark gave up.

This experiment was repeated several dozen times over subsequent few weeks. whenever , the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack the bait fish, until eventually the shark got uninterested in hitting the fiberglass divider and easily stopped attacking altogether.

The marine biologist then removed the fiberglass divider, but the shark didn’t attack. The shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and therefore the bait fish, therefore the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.

The moral: Many folks , after experiencing setbacks and failures, emotionally hand over and stop trying. just like the shark within the story, we believe that because we were unsuccessful within the past, we'll always be unsuccessful. 

In other words, we still see a barrier in our heads, even when no ‘real’ barrier exists between where we are and where we would like to travel.