my thoughts concerning learning and how we associate certain behaviors with other certain actions take me to an episode of the big bang theory where one character "sheldon" uses classical conditioning on a female character "penny" by presenting her with chocolate every time she acts according to sheldon's expectations. While pondering this i wondered to myself if it is instinctual of all mammals to survive and to therefore associate positive and negative behavior with certain external stimuli. it seems that this is the case with humans at least because whenever you experience something bad you usually associate other factors along with that bad experience and when you experience something positive you most likely deem the steps you took to engage in the positive experience worth retaking or value them higher than the ones leading to the bad experience. When speaking of prolonging life or making life-saving habits or even when the situation deals with reaching success, anytime we associate 2 events close together and immediately short after encounter success then we will probably keep doing those things more often in hopes of achieving that same amount of success