Thorndike’s Law of Effect is one that makes absolute sense when viewing it from a real-world stand point. Everything we have done in our lives creates or sparks some sort of emotion inside of our bodies. Naturally, we remember much of everything we do because we live it and experience it. What this law is saying is that no matter if the event caused good or bad emotion, the absolute value of that emotion determines how long or how much it will effect oneself.
This can be easily shown threw 2 different extremes. On a positive scale, making it to the NFL and making millions of dollars will have a huge positive effect on your life, in terms of salary and fame. This extreme sensation of being a world class athlete would change just about everyone in some way or another. Whether it be that everyone knows your name, or that you earn more respect, your life would be greatly effected. On another note, one negative thing such as dog fighting, can have a terrible negative effect. This is seen in Michael Vick, a quarterback in the NFL. His life was turned around dramatically when he came into the NFL, and probably even more when he was convicted of fighting dogs. Both of these events gained just about the same amount of publicity, and have both made a dramatic change in his life, yet one was positive and one was negative. It doesn’t matter whether positive or negative because the scale will always be what your mind stores away.
