A behavioral psychologist experimented to see if a mouse could learn from an example set by another mouse. The experiment failed.

The psychologist had trained a mouse to operate a food machine. The mouse, when it got hungry, would pull a lever at one end of the machine, where upon some food would drop out at the other end of the machine. One day, the psychologist put a second, untrained, mouse in the same cage to see if the untrained mouse would learn to operate the machine by observing the trained mouse. When the trained mouse got hungry, it went over to the lever side of the machine and pulled the lever, causing some food to come out the other end of the machine. The untrained mouse, seeing the food, ran to the food and ate it all. By the time the trained mouse could run up to the food, the untrained mouse already finished it all. After some time, the trained mouse pulled the lever again. Again, the untrained mouse ran to the food and ate it all up before the trained mouse to could get to the food that had come out. This continued for a while. The untrained mouse became quite a pest. Every time the trained mouse would approach the lever, the untrained mouse would immediately run to the other end of the machine and eat any food that came out, leaving the trained mouse to starve. The untrained mouse never showed any interest in learning to operate the machine.

There is an analogy to the story in the human behavior as well. Many of us as parents, mentors and other well wishers try to set good examples for younger people, hoping that the youngsters would follow our examples. In a lot of cases, we are disappointed when younger people do not follow the examples we set.

Why does setting examples not work? The reasons are motivational. I know of a wealthy person whose financial success is a rags-to-riches story. He was bitterly disappointed by his son’s lack of interest in either making money or saving money. The situation was beyond the man’s comprehension and he wondered where he had gone wrong in raising his son. The father failed to see the difference between his own and his son’s motivations. The father, in his early years had very little money and worried about providing for his family. The son, who stood to inherit his father’s wealth, simply could not feel the same motivation that had driven his father to make and save money.

It is natural to be unhappy when our well intentioned “good” example is not followed. We all do things for our own reasons. It is irrational to expect others to follow our examples when they do not have the same motivational reasons to drive their behavior. It is better to try to see things from the other person’s perspective. If we do this, we stand a better chance of persuading the other person to follow our wish – and “example”, provided it still makes sense.

Now, to get back to the mice story, the untrained mouse never learned the example set by the trained mouse. Hungry and desperate for food, the trained mouse, finally, found a solution. He pulled the lever again and again till so much food came out the other end that it was enough to fully feed the untrained mouse, and there was enough was left over to feed the trained mouse.

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