Behavior Principles in Everyday Life

1
Behavior Principles in Everyday Life

• Positive and Negative Control
• Chapter 14

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Positive and Negative Control

• Positive control consists of all conditioning and
  stimulus control that is based on positive
  reinforcement.
• Negative control consists of all conditioning and
  stimulus control that is based on punishment and
  negative reinforcement.
• Behavioral research has shown that almost any
  activity can be learned under either positive or
  negative control. There are, however, important
  emotional and motivational differences in the
  behavior produced by positive reinforcement and
  punitive control.

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Humanistic Applications

• Much of modern technology and culture functions
  to decrease our exposure to aversive stimuli and
  increase our access to positive stimuli.
• Behavior science is the first discipline to
  analyze positive and negative control, develop
  better methods of positive control, devise
  alternatives to aversive control, and give people
  the information they need to switch from negative
  to positive methods of social interaction.

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Humanistic Applications Cont.

• A major goal of behavior science is to help
  people learn ways to minimize aversives the
  pains of negative control and replace them with
  practices that increase positive reinforcers in
  everyones lives.

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Desirable Behavior

• When a person is learning or doing any desirable
  behavior kindness, honesty, improving their
  skills or creativity the advantages of positive
  control are obvious.
• Positive control increases the frequency of the
  behavior and makes the person eager to learn
  more.
• Positive control also conditions the behavior
  itself into a secondary reinforcer, so merely
  doing the behavior elicits positive emotional
  responses and becomes intrinsically rewarding.
• Negative control tends to lower the frequency of
  behavior and condition the behavior into a
  secondary punisher.

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Increasing Positive Control

• People benefit enormously by learning how to
  increase the use of positive reinforcement for
  their own behavior and the behavior of others.
• (1.) Primary Reinforcers
• (2.) Secondary Reinforcers
• -It is possible to follow desirable behavior
  with large numbers of secondary reinforcers.

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Increasing Positive Control Cont.

• In general, people with similar values and
  behavior repertoires bring more reinforcers into
  each others lives than do people with dissimilar
  values and behavior repertoires.

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Decreasing Negative Control

• There are three ways to reduce the aversives,
  and each one can shift the cost/reward ratio of
  the behavior more toward the positive side.
• (1.) Reducing Aversives Lightening Others
  Loads.
• (2.) Not Adding Aversives No Nagging,
  Please.
• (3.) Not Removing Positive Stimuli No
  Withholding of Love, Please.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment

• (1.) Punishment Often Teaches Aggression.
• (2.) Punishment Causes More Vigorous
  Responding.
• -When a person receives intense punishment be
  it harsh criticism or physical blows the person
  is likely to show a general increase in muscle
  tension and increase in vigor of responding.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment
Cont.

• (3.) Punishment Produces Only Temporary
  Response Suppression.
• -If an undesired behavior is punished, the rate
  of responding will be suppressed, but in most
  cases response suppression is only temporary.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment
Cont.

• (4.) The Punished Person Learns to Avoid Both
  Punishment and the People Who Punish.
• - Socializing agents must realize that if they
  opt to use punishment in order to suppress
  someone elses behavior, they will motivate the
  punished person to avoid detection and/or the
  people who punish.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment
Cont.

• (5.) Punishment Conditions Negative Emotions.
• -Negative control is based on aversives, and
  these aversive stimuli condition many other
  features of the punished persons life into CSs
  that elicit painful emotions. People who have
  received frequent punishment often learn to
  respond to a large number of stimuli as CSs for
  aversive emotional responses--fear, anxiety,
  shame, guilt, or bad feelings about themselves.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment
Cont.

• (6.) Punishment Can Lead to Generalized
  Response Suppression.
• -When some behavior, X, is punished, we may note
  that behavior X, and only X, becomes suppressed.
• -In contrast, when behavior X and numerous other
  activities are punished, we may see generalized
  response suppression.

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There Are Six Main Problems With Using Punishment
Cont.

• (6.) Cont.
• -Generalized punishment can produce highly
  inhibited people people who are afraid to speak
  up, who never take the lead, who fear aversive
  consequences at every turn.

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Alternatives to Punishment

• (1.) Differential Reinforcement of Other
  Behavior Especially Incompatible Behavior.
• -An effective nonpunitive method for decreasing
  the frequency of a behavior is the use of
  differential reinforcement of other behavior.
• -Differential reinforcement of other behavior
  works best when the other behavior is
  incompatible with the undesired behavior. These
  schedules are called differential reinforcement
  of incompatible behavior.

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Alternatives to Punishment Cont.

• (2.) Observational Learning.
• -Models can provide information and vicarious
  reinforcement that increases desirable behavior,
  which often suppresses undesirable behavior.

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Alternatives to Punishment Cont.

• (3.) Reasoning and Rules.
• -Instead of punishing people for undesirable
  behavior, it is often possible to have a gentle
  but firm conversation with them about the
  consequences of both the undesirable behavior and
  several more positive alternatives.
• (4.) Extinction.
• -Because extinction does not involve the
  application of aversive stimuli, it does not
  condition aversive emotional responses. Also, it
  does not provide models for verbal or physical
  attacks on others.

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Alternatives to Punishment Cont.

• (5.) Gentle Punishment.
• -There are two very gentle but effective and
  nonviolent forms of punishment timeout and
  response cost.
• -Timeout is a period during which a person
  cannot enjoy normal reinforcement schedules
  because some undesirable behavior has occurred.
• -Response cost attaches some extra cost to an
  undesirable behavior, without taking away
  reinforcers the way timeout does.