Behavioral SelfControl

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Behavioral Self-Control

• Controlling yourself
• Controlling your environment
• Controlling your response repertoire
• Controlling your consequences

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1. Controlling yourself

• Self-observation and self-assessment
• What are your buttons?
• When do you do (or not do) what you do?
• What is the setting?
• What else could you do?
• What are the consequences?
• Focus on behaviors, not results

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Self-monitoring

• Identify the behavior you want to change.
• Be explicit, concrete, and detailed.
• Choose measurement tactics
• Behavioral diary
• Ledger-ruled 3 x 5 cards
• Pocket counters
• Pocket timers

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Ledger-ruled 3 x 5 cards
Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri
Sat Sun
8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4
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Self-monitoring, continued

• Choose measurement strategy
• Actuarial frequency/time How often/how long did
  it happen?
• All-or-none Did it happen in a time period?
• Emphasize the need for brutal accuracy.
• Be aware of reactivity effects.
• Graph and display

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2. Controlling your environment

• Stimulus control
• Restrict the environmental cues for the behavior
• Restrict the behavior to the environmental cues
• Establish novel cues for the behavior
• Buzzer for smoking
• Yellow night-light marital therapy
• Things can go wrong Think carefully about the
  appropriate novel cue.

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An example Stuart, 1967, Stimulus control for
obesity

• Limit eating cues
• Leave portions on plate
• Limit portion availability
• Increase availability of non-fattening foods
• Alter the eating process
• Arrange social cues
• Change response to emotional upset

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3. Controlling your response repertoire

• Learn new responses that can potentially compete
  with undesirable behaviors.
• Increase the frequency of desirable responses
  through stimulus control and contingency
  management.
• Behavior is a zero-sum game The more time you
  spend doing good, the less time is left for doing
  evil.

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4. Controlling your consequences Contingency
management

• Identify rewards and punishers
• Prearrange consequences
• Disulfiram/Antabuse
• The shocking cigarette box (Azrin, 1968)
• Contract with yourself
• Contract with someone else (Contingency
  contracting)
• Therapist, clergyman, friend
• Spouse

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More contingency management strategies

• Social Praise and Ignoring
• Prearrange social praise and ignoring
• Elicit social praise by graph-and-display
  techniques
• Use the Premack principle
• Use shaping
• Start with modest, readily achievable goals.
• Move the goals incrementally.