I think learning and conditioning play the most important role for human behavior and mental processes. I believe that most of us would think we do things rather out of habit and even if we do things that are out of the ordinary, and we give them a great deal of thought and consideration, what we are really doing is running old, automatic programs.

For example, at the time of this writing the virus checker is running automatically on my computer. I got an email from a mail list that warns me to scan my computer for a specific virus. Even though I know that particular virus is not on my system, I almost immediately scan my computer. Of course it's not a bad thing but do I do it because I really believed that there could be a virus or, do I do it out of habit...