Why We Get Hungry and Sleepy at Church.

Studying Psychology has allowed me to become acquainted with various schools of thought as well as their theories on what dictates our actions. It was this state of enlightenment that allowed me to come to a possible reason as to why we all get sleepy and hungry at church. That reason being prayer.

LDS doctrine states that we should pray often, most LDS families pray before eating and going to bed at night. The experiment of the behaviorist Ivan Pavlov has provided us with information on how we become sleepy and/or hungry after a prayer. In Pavlov's experiment he found that a dog had a conditional reflex that caused the dog to drool when presented with a certain stimuli, in his case chili.

Is it far-fetched to believe that we as LDS people have developed a conditional reflex? Is our desire for sleep and food triggered by the stimulus of prayer? I'm starting to think Pavlov was right. If you say a prayer before dinner each night of the work week, that's five different prayers signaling food. If a prayer is said before bed each night of the work week, that five prayer's signaling rest. Now it seems plausible to conclude that in a three hour block of church that, excluding sacrament, consists of six different prayers one could have a reflex action to such a stimulus. And in our culture, it appears as though that reflex would be food or rest.

If you're still confused, watch the Office explain Pavlov's findings. It's in the video 3:00 minutes in.