Behavior Brewed Daily: How Starbucks Reinforces (and Sabotages) My Day ☕️🌟🏬
Let me introduce you to my best friend (and my bank account’s worst nightmare) - Starbucks.
A photo of one of my biggest supporters - and fellow coffee addict ☕️
Coffee and caffeine have been a routine part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a young girl, I loved waking up to the smell of my grandpa’s coffee brewing. It was more than a daily ritual—it became a sentiment. A simple stimulus that evoked feelings of comfort, fresh starts, and happy memories with my grandparents.
What began as a comforting tradition gradually became…a bit of a personality trait. When I announced my move to Omaha, one coworker even wrote in my farewell card, “I just hope they have copious amounts of coffee and caffeine on standby!”
That didn’t come out of nowhere—and neither do our habits.
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) doesn’t just show up in clinical settings. Nor should it. When we limit the scope of ABA to our professional practice, we also limit the spaces in which behavioral science can be recognized, appreciated, and applied. The truth is, ABA principles are at play in our everyday decisions, cravings, and relationships.
That’s the goal of this series: to demystify ABA and highlight how it exists in the background of our daily lives. While it’s a tool that has been wielded in both helpful and harmful ways, at its core, ABA is simply a lens for understanding behavior, and behavior is everywhere.
So, let’s talk about how a loving childhood memory turned into a full-blown behavioral case study, complete with motivating operations, intermittent reinforcement, and the sneaky trap of self-delivered rewards.
In this blog, I’ll explore 7 key behavioral concepts that help explain my ever-growing coffee obsession—complete with visual aids and real-life examples.
☕️ Respondent Conditioning: How Coffee Came to Feel Like Comfort
Respondent conditioning occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus until the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2020). In my case, this learning process unfolded during the many early mornings I spent with my grandpa. Before any pairing occurred, I experienced unconditioned stimuli—like a warm breakfast and my grandpa’s affection—which naturally elicited unconditioned responses such as feelings of comfort, safety, and emotional warmth. These responses occurred without any prior learning.
During the conditioning phase, the neutral stimulus—the smell of brewing coffee—was repeatedly present during these comforting moments. Although the smell of coffee originally had no emotional significance, its repeated pairing with the warm, loving environment created a new association. Over time, this pairing resulted in the coffee smell alone beginning to evoke the same comforting feelings.
After conditioning, the smell of coffee became a conditioned stimulus, capable of eliciting the conditioned response of warmth and emotional security—even in the absence of my grandpa or breakfast. What was once a neutral part of the environment had become a powerful emotional cue, thanks to the process of stimulus-stimulus pairing.
2. “No Coffee, No Workee”: How MOs Mess with My Morning Brew
Now that we’ve explored how coffee became emotionally reinforcing through respondent conditioning, let’s look at the motivating variables influencing how often I actually seek it out.
In behavior analysis, motivating operations (MOs) are environmental events or conditions that temporarily alter the value of a reinforcer and the likelihood of behaviors that access it (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2020). Because coffee has been paired with feelings of warmth, comfort, and alertness over time, certain situations increase the strength of that association—and make “coffee-seeking” behavior more likely.
For example, on a stressful morning when everything feels chaotic, I’m much more likely to grab a cup of coffee. In those moments, the emotional comfort and sense of control it brings are especially reinforcing. As I got older, another layer of pairing took place: I realized coffee didn’t just feel good—it woke me up. Cue the adult version of me who now says, “No coffee, no workee,” and suddenly the behavior is emotionally and physiologically reinforced.
MOs include two key components: establishing operations (EOs), which increase the value of a reinforcer, and abolishing operations (AOs), which decrease it. If I’m sleep-deprived, overwhelmed, or running on empty, the value of coffee skyrockets—making it much more likely I’ll seek it out. That’s an establishing operation in full effect.
On the other hand, if I’ve already had multiple cups, feel jittery, or have a low-stress, restful day, the desire to get coffee drops significantly. I’m satiated, and coffee loses its reinforcing power—an abolishing operation: same reinforcer, different value depending on the context.
3. Negative Reinforcement Works Both Ways—Just Ask My Husband
(An Everyday Example of Operant Conditioning)
“Operant conditioning may be seen everywhere in the multifarious activities of human beings from birth until death”
Simply put, operant conditioning is the process by which consequences influence behavior. When a behavior is followed by something desirable, it becomes more likely to occur again (reinforcement). When a behavior leads to something undesirable, it’s less likely to happen in the future (punishment).
Regarding my long-standing love for coffee, I’m not the only one being conditioned—my relationship with Starbucks also has operant effects on the people around me work? BAM—Starbucks appears on my desk like magic. Hit a significant milestone? A gift card shows up in my inbox. At this point, it’s a full-blown personality trait—one I know many fellow coffee lovers can relate to.
And the influence doesn’t stop with me. My husband has learned that offering me Starbucks increases the chances I’ll pack boxes or tackle a dreaded task—and decreases the crankiness along the way. That’s operant conditioning at work: our behavior is shaped by its consequences, often without us even realizing it.
👇 Check out the visual below to see how operant conditioning plays a role in our daily coffee-driven interactions.
4. ☕️ Rule-Governed Behavior: When Coffee Isn't About the Consequence (But You Still Do It Anyway)
Picture this: You wake up fully rested—maybe even a little jittery. Every cue in your body is screaming, “You don’t need coffee today.” Maybe you’re trying to save money for something important, or your budget just doesn’t have room for a $7 latte (been there, done that). On the surface, there’s no obvious reinforcer waiting on the other side of that Starbucks run.
But then comes the whisper:
“I can’t start my day without coffee.”
“Coffee helps me focus—and I really need to focus today.”
These verbal rules often guide our behavior in place of direct contact with reinforcement. This is what we call rule-governed behavior—when our actions are controlled by internal or external statements about what should happen, rather than by immediate consequences in the environment.
In this case, there’s no reinforcement yet. You haven’t tasted the coffee. You might not even need it. But your rule says otherwise, and so you go. Hopefully, the competing rule of “I can’t explain this purchase to my spouse for the third time this week” kicks in just in time to shift the behavior—but let’s be honest… it usually doesn’t.
Take this photo, for example. On that particular morning, I was well-rested, not especially stressed, and didn’t need caffeine in the traditional, behavior-analytic sense—there was no deprivation or strong motivating operation in place.
But the rule I told myself was:
“I have 200 points to spend on a free drink, and I need it today.”
That internal statement was enough to guide my behavior. Even without a clear external consequence pushing me toward coffee, my verbal history shaped the decision. That’s rule-governed behavior in action: responding not because of what is, but because of what I’ve told myself will be.
5. Triple Shot: Generalization, Automatic Reinforcement, and Self-Management
Let’s talk about how my deep-rooted coffee obsession is the perfect case study for understanding three behavioral concepts: generalization, automatic reinforcement, and self-management. Here’s how they blend (pun absolutely intended) into one very motivating routine.
1️⃣ Generalization
Generalization is said to occur when a behavior continues over time, across settings, and across related responses. And trust me—I’ve been generalizing my coffee behavior for over a decade.
You name the setting—Starbucks (my personal favorite), Caribou, home-brew, gas station—it doesn’t matter. If coffee is available, I’m there. And the behavior? Oh, it’s flexible. I can make it at home, order it through the app, hit the drive-thru, sip it hot, iced, through a straw or straight from the mug. Coffee has clearly maintained across environments, forms, and delivery methods. Generalization goals: achieved.
2️⃣ Automatic Reinforcement
This is where things get a little... dangerous. Automatic reinforcement is when the behavior itself is maintained by internal consequences—not by others. It’s the ultimate “treat yourself” loop.
And Starbucks? They’ve gamified this beautifully. The little stars on the app? Built-in token economy. That dopamine hit when you're almost at a free drink? Yeah, that’s a reinforcer right there. Over the years, coffee has evolved from a cozy, sentimental routine into a self-applied reward for everything from “I got accepted into school!” to “I stubbed my toe... yeah, I deserve this.” If my behavior could talk, it would say: "Any reason is a good enough reason for a latte."
3️⃣ Self-Management
Enter the guardrails. Self-management is how I regulate this powerful (and pricey) reinforcer. It’s setting up systems that define when, why, and how coffee can be accessed. It might look like:
Saving Starbucks runs for high-effort tasks
Earning coffee after workouts
Limiting purchases to X times a week
Creating rules around who can reinforce me (yes, sometimes I’m the barista and the client)
If you’re also riding the coffee train and want to avoid derailing your budget or overindulging your impulses—build a plan. Self-management is the behavior analyst’s best friend (second only to espresso).
☕ If you’ve made it to the end of this post, here’s a self-governed verbal rule just for you:
“You deserve to go get a coffee!”
Thanks for reading—I hope you enjoyed this behavioral brew!
A Note to Readers:
Interested in “Accidentally ABA”?
Have a question, a scenario to share, or a moment you’d like featured? I’d love to hear from you! Use the contact form below to get in touch.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are my own (Functionally Speaking ABA) and do not reflect the views of UNMC
