Cultists, they are all just like cultists.

And yes, the reflexes are conditioning like Pavlov's Dog - caused by anchoring a sensation of pain (hunger, in that case) with a secondary trigger (the bell).

Cultists of a certain type will debate with me about whether it's a cult or not. It's not a cult of personality, it is the worship of symbols, or as Christians would say, worshipping idols. The bible literally says "graven images" and the Byzantines twisted this to permit icons, but at the time "graven images" was written, a common form of writing was marks stamped into clay, and indeed, Moses tablets were either this or stone carved with metal tools (probably copper).

These conditioned reflexes are very hard to break out of, even as you openly and vocally speak against the more salient elements of the programs. I made a little set of 9 concise ways to recognise people using these triggers to manipulate you, that I called "The Manipulation Protocol".

I selected a series of words starting with C, so the words all have a tie to each other. The regular case word on the left encapsulates the general concept, the all caps two words on the right are expansions of what mechanism the type of manipulation entails, and the red all caps is a single word to sum up how you should react.

I'm not 100% sure I have expressed everything perfectly, but it was intended to be a set of codes to help you anchor the concepts so when you are in the field you can quickly identify that someone is trying to manipulate you, by the fact you are seeing two or more of these elements used in their interactions with you. If you see as many as 4 in one encounter, 100% guaranteed you are in the presence of psychopaths.