This exact scenario has happened to me many times in my life. It is your own kind that will bring you down if they perceive you are:

"doing something you are not supposed to do and getting away with it!"

from a Casey missive, reader and correspondent Jacques T.writes:

 If you start with a cage containing five monkeys, and inside the cage hang a banana on a string from the top, and then place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes an attempt with same result... all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new one.  The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment... with enthusiasm.

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new one, followed by a fourth, then the fifth.  Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.

Why, you ask? Because in their minds, that is the way it has always been!

This, my friends, is how Congress and the Senate operates... and is why, from time to time, all of the monkeys need to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME.

One obvious lesson from that citation – a lesson first made viral by Pavlov in the early 20 ^thcentury – is that humans, like all the lower animal forms, are easily trained through trial and error, especially when rewards and punishments are involved. But even the lack of a treat or a torment can be instructional – for instance, if walking through a particular door results in no reward or punishment, you won’t hesitate to walk through that door again.