| But for most rational, humanistic uses, the negatives (disadvantages/weaknesses) of Pn far outweigh the positives, because: 1. Administering Pn almost always means giving the S attention for his/her undesirable B, and attention is a powerful +Rf! This means trying to Pn almost always sends a mixed, both encouraging and discouraging signal to the S. Thus, Pned Bs often increase, instead of decrease, because getting the attention is "worth" taking the Pn for the S. (Abused kids who seem to adore and will even protect their abusing parents are a stark and revealing example of this "mixed signals" point.) 2. Pn almost always results in numerous undesirable S side effects, including aggression, avoidance, and dishonesty, which make even carefully applied Pns often produce very costly and mixed results, at best. 3. Except in very unusual circumstances, Pn only temporarily suppresses the undesirable B; it doesn't decrease it in the long run. Some people see punishment (Pn) as "self evidently" a good discipline technique; while others -- especially those who have learned the real nature of Pn -- know better. Historically, Pn has played a major role in most societies' child rearing, discipline, and legal enforcement at the individual, family, cultural, and even civilization levels. Not only does there seem to be an inherent, almost reflexive human drive to try to punish others when they don't do what we want, but the much heralded Judeo-Christian and Islam held family values are based on the premise that people (children, men, women) do good because that reflects the God or Allah in us, while we do evil because of the Satan/devil's influence (plus, of course, our inherent ignorance, bad judgment, and sinfulness). Thus, when children (family members, friends, employees) behave well, the theory goes, parents should do nothing (because all the credit should go to their God or Allah). But when subjects misbehave, it is the religious right and responsibility of authority figures to punish them, to make them suffer for the error of their ways, to presage the hell that justly awaits them if they keep sinning (keep comminting mistakes), and to force them back to the righteous path of all good little religionists. This is about as ignorant, barbaric and unenlightened as child rearing can get! Unfortunately, as the history of any theistic culture and careful observation of any religious people or families will typically show, discipline based predominantly on punishment -- especially frequent corporal (harsh physical) punishment -- tends to produce frightened, timid, guild-ridden authoritarian neurotics (this is often called "learned helplessness"), or macho authoritarian bullies (angry, aggressive hitters and even killers), or sadists (people who get pleasure out of seeing others suffer), or functional masochists (people who see suffering and misery as inevitable -- and eventually even good -- components of "normal" life). In the Taliban's Islamic Afghanistan, for example, we had a whole culture based on autocratic restrictions and punishments that provided no major role for reinforcements, except after death (in "heaven"). Given all these undesirable effects, punishment (Pn) would have to be a remarkably effective behavior management tool to justify its use in most situations, but it's just not. Instead, the number of undesirable side effects associated with the routine use of punishment (Pn) to control behaviors more than outweighs the positive effects so consistently that scientists recommend using punishment to control behavior only in a few rare situations where no other nonreinforcement (NRf) is available. Here are five of the major undesirable side effects routinely associated with relying on Pn to reduce a subject's undesirable behaviors: 1. Pning Ss routinely makes them frustrated, and the natural response to frustration is aggression. (This is called the "frustration-aggression theorem.") Thus, Pning Ss (subjects) makes them more aggressive toward the Pner and others. 2. Pn is highly "situation specific." When a father spanks to teach his child not to throw food around at dinner, he's more likely teaching "don't throw food when Father is present," and the undesirable behavior often actually increases in other meal situations when "punishing Dad" isn't there (or is in a good, passive mood). 3. Pning makes Ss want to avoid the punishment, often in ways that are more undesirable than the Pned act itself. Pn encourages the development of "operant Pn avoidance" behaviors, such as lying, cheating, insincere apologizing and promising not to do it again, manipulating the Pner, and avoidance of the Pner in general. We usually use Pn to make the S stop the undesirable B; but too often the actual result is that the S just learns new ways to do the undesirable B and get away with it by manipulating people to avoid the Pn. (This can easily turn into social psychopathy, and we have more than enough psychopaths in the world already without developing even more through the ineffective use of Pn.) 4. Pning a subject when one doesn't like their behavior models aggression (physical and/or verbal), and the S is very likely to imitate that aggression, especially when they are stronger than other people. Clearly, increasing the S's aggressive B is rarely a desirable outcome for Pn (except perhaps in the Armed Services or street gangs), and modeling aggression can only lead to more aggression overall. 5. Pn often loses its effectiveness with repetition, and this can lead to escalation of the P, often to the level of abuse (physical and/or verbal stress or violence that damages the S's CNS and produces pathology). Abused people routinely become abusing people, themselves, and this is exactly why such abuse is so common in certain families, cultures, and ethnic groups. Widespread Pn is the sign of a pathogenic (dysfunction-producing, sickness-fostering, problem-ridden) group or society. So, although the debate about the efficacy (practical effectiveness) of punishment has literally raged for millennia, scientific research on a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations has finally provided definitive answers. Those basic answers can be summarized as follows: A. What Pn is really good at is interrupting a sequence of undesirable behaviors; when Sss are Pned in effective ways, they react quickly to that aversive stimulus. (So its primary use should be for that purpose only.)
B. But due to the frequent production of numerous undesirable side effects, Pn is not an effective tool for routinely decreasing undesirable behaviors for most people. (It's typical to actually increase the number of undesirable Bs with Pn.)
C. Thus Pn should be reserved for use in only a few "emergency" situations: · When continuation of the S's behavior sequence would be extremely dangerous or life threatening; e.g., if a friend is gabbing away distractedly while he drives through a red light into a busy intersection, yell at him as a Pn! · As a "last resort," when all other behavior reduction methods have failed, and you must convince the S that you cannot take any more of his/her undesirable B, and you must make them start taking you very seriously from that point onward. (Yell at them, or curse them, or grab them vigorously, but try not to hit.) · And this is controversial, but I recommend using verbal Pn with people who can't understand verbal explanations or consequences, such as pre-lingual infants. (I think verbal Pn is the logical and efficacious choice not only when an infant is reaching for a hot stove eye, but also when they persist in pulling things off store shelves from their strollers despite verbal cautions and removing their hands. Of course, once the association is made and as soon as the S can understand words, you should transfer from verbal or physical Pn to verbal warnings alone, and use Pn only as a backup, as needed. See the much more effective inhibition nonreinforcement methods discussed below.) So if punishment (Pn) doesn't work very well and, worse still, actually encourages the development of more aggressive and dishonest behaviors (Bs) in the subject (S), what can rational but practical humanists use routinely to decrease undesirable Bs (or thoughts or feelings) in others or themselves? Fortunately, nature provides two other nonreinforcements (NRfs), but unfortunately, only one of them is efficacious (practical and reliable). We'll cover the practical and useful one first. The main nonreinforcement (NRf) humans should rely on in BeMod is called inhibition (Inh) which comes in two forms: response cost (RC) and time out (TO). Response cost (RC) is defined as decreasing an undesirable behavior (B) by removing a positive consequence (C) from the subject (S) as a result of the behavior (B). In other words, RC is "fining" or "penalizing" a person by taking away something they want as a consequence of their (presumably undesirable) behavior. TO uses the same principle, but applies it in reverse. TO: is defined as removing the S from a positive C as a result of the undesirable B. The distinction is whether the Rf is taken away from the S (RC) or the S is taken away from the Rf (TO). In either form, Inh is a very effective NRf, because it has very few of the negative side effects of Pn, and is much faster and more practical than extinction (discussed next). Plus, if you have a generally positive relationship with the person whose B you're trying to decrease -- such as with a friend, family member, or work associate -- Inh will work even better, since you'll have lots of your own personal Rfs you can easily and naturally control in your BeMod. Thus, Inh is by far the most natural, useful, and effective NRf for humanists. Some examples of inhibition (Inh) should help demonstrate its utility. Any systematic removal of your positive attention (e.g., warm looks, smiles, kind words, hugs or pats or other affectionate contact) when someone else does something undesirable (i.e., does something you don't like, something bad, or expresses a maladaptive thought or feeling) constitutes response cost (RC). The next "step up" in strength of RC can also include small, moderate, or even powerful withdrawal of privileges, such as expelling a student from a school they like, or levying heavy financial penalties for misconduct (like traffic violations, civil lawbreaking, or some criminal activities). Likewise, time out (TO) can be used whenever it is better or more practical to remove the S than the C, such as making someone leave a party or bar (where they really want to stay) for bad conduct, or firing a person from a job they need for poor work, or banishing a member of a cherished social group or organization for breaking the rules. As is true of all these BeMod concepts and principles based on the natural laws of learning, Inh naturally occurs to everyone, everyday. All we're trying to do here in this study is to enable the prticipants to better understand those natural learning principles and how they really work, so they can use them more effectively to enhance their own lives and others with whom they interact, and make the world a better place for humanism. The third nonreinforcement (NRf) option is extinction. Extinction (Ext) is defined as reducing an undesirable behavior by having absolutely no consequence -- neither positive nor negative -- associated with that behavior (B). In other words, the person performs a behavior (or thinks a thought or feels and emotion), but nothing happens; nothing pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad ... nothing at all happens as a consequence of that behavior. In early comparative psychology experiments (research with non-human animals, mostly rats), Ext was considered a very effective NRf, because when researchers provided absolutely no consequence, the animals' behaviors decreased, slowly but consistently, with virtually no undesirable side effects. (Sometimes there was an initial increase in violent behaviors -- called "extinction-induced aggression" -- but it was usually milder and of shorter duration than the punishment-induced aggression mentioned earlier.) Subsequently, however, Ext has proved to be a very limited NRf that only works under a very rare and limited set of circumstances (and almost never with humans). The problem lies in the fact that to implement true Ext, the behavior manager has to have milieu control (complete, 100% control over all the S's A and C stimuli) to prevent contamination of the extinction paradigm by other positive or negative consequences. (If any positive or negative consequences whatsoever sneak in, that's not Ext; it's pseudo-Ext! It's some form of Rf or NRf, and the side effects of those paradigms -- not Ext -- will apply.) While experimenters can have milieu control over the environments of lab animals, the situations where one human has milieu control over another human or group are extremely rare, due to numerous practical, logistical, legal, ethical, and moral reasons. (Possible exceptions include prison situations, including prisoner-of-war camps and penitentiaries, military situations like basic training, cult-like situations as with ares under strict Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Islamic enviornment of totally controlled isolation, and parental control in infancy and early childhood. But even in those atypical situations, the total milieu control necessary for true Ext are usually difficult -- and morally and ethically even more problematic -- to achieve reliably over extended periods of time.) Thus, while extinction (Ext) is an effective nonreinforcement (NRf) in a lab's milieu control conditions -- slow, but consistent and reliable -- it is almost always totally ineffective for human behavior management, because (1) the milieu control prerequisite for Ext is usually impossible, and (2) if perfect milieu control is not established, either some Rf or otherNRf is really happening, and those will produce different outcomes than Ext. Moreover, (3) humans almost never react to any stimulus "totally neutrally," with not even the slightest "+" or "-" associated. And if the C is not perfectly "0," or neutral, or perfectly equal and off-setting degrees of "+" and "-" (canceling each other out), it's simply not Ext, but rather some other C. If your pseudo-Ext is slightly positive, you're actually Rfing the B, and if your pseudo-Ext is slightly negative, you're actually Pning the B. Thus, trying to use Ext usually fails because true Ext never occurs (and even when it does, Inh is usually better). An example should help clarify these critical distinctions between extinction (Ext) and "pseudo-Ext" (which is actually a different C, and won't produce Ext results). Many books teach that the human equivalent of Ext is "ignoring bad behaviors," but this is almost always pseudo-Ext instead. For example, if you decide to reduce your friend's use of bad English by extinguishing that B using the C of ignoring it, you will almost certainly fail. It is much more likely that your friend will consider your ignoring C as a -Rf (because you used to criticize them or give them a dirty look, but now you don't, so that's the consequential removal of the aversive C as a result of the behavior, which is reinforcing. Thus, you'll actually increase the undesirable "bad English B" you're trying to decrease!) Or, perhaps your friend will interpret your "ignoring C" as removing your positive attention as a consequence of their "bad English B", and that's RC (which is an NRf, but it's not the same as Ext). A third possible contingency is that your friend intrinsically enjoys using bad English, so your ignoring it leaves them unfettered to use it all they want (which they find +Rf). Again, the undesirable B you're trying to decrease will likely increase instead. In almost all cases, ignoring an undesirable B is actually pseudo-Ext and will actually increase its occurrence, not decrease it. (Bummer!) So when someone makes a big mistake like trying to extinguish (Ext) an undesirable B by ignoring it, it's not behavior modification (BeMod) failing, or even Ext failing; it's the behavior manager mistakenly using pseudo-Ext and often actually Rfing the undesirable B -- which according to the scientific principles of BeMod should increase the B, and it does. The bottom line is, trying to use Ext almost never works because it's almost never true Ext. Unfortunately, the history of psychology and behavior management is littered with thousands of examples of people learning to distrust behavior management because they tried to use Ext but never actually achieved Ext -- or they tried to use Pn without knowing its side-effects, and when that didn't work out well, they concluded that BeMod didn't work. Now, you know better. In fact, almost every single time someone says, "I tried BeMod but it didn't work," you can safely assume that either (1) they didn't administer the BeMod principles correctly, or (2) they couldn't control the critical Cs that were necessary to succeed, or (3) they were trying to NRf an intrinsically Rfing behavior. As another example of how powerful consequential management can be when it is correctly applied, the only way institutions for the severely psychopathologically disabled (e.g., psychotics, autistics, severely or profoundly retarded people, the "criminally insane," etc.) could ever teach their patients to control even such routine daily behaviors as eating, hygiene, dressing, cleaning their rooms, and basic socializing was through 24 hour BeMod programs called selective reinforcement (very consistently Rfing desirable Bs and NRfing undesirable Bs throughout the day and night) until the Ss learned that the only way they were going to get to do their favorite activities (foods, games, social contacts, etc.) was to behave the very best they could within their limited ranges of abilities to learn. (NOTE: Despite some claims and disinformation to the contrary, there is no need to significantly harm even these least communicative and "responsible" people to get unprecedented good results with BeMod. Knowing their Rfs and NRfs, controlling all their Rfs and NRfs, and being very consistent throughout the day is quite enough. But there have been some "horror stories" of "abuse-masquerading-as-BeMod" in such tyèe religious institutions, and we're definitely NOT talking about that kind of thing here.) As you probably anticipated, selective Rf is by far the most effective BeMod method to use with "normal" people, too |