Leo Minnigh struggles, very successfully I may add, with Jon's thorough
descriptions of behavioral principles. But he wonders about various
addictive behaviors:
>All these things are great attractors, although the victom usually knows
>very well that it is unhealthy. The mind says NO, the heart says YES. The
>short-term consequence is desired, the long-term not.
That's very well put. And, if you remember, Jon told us that there are
characteristics of consequences that determine how strongly they affect
one's behavior, viz.:
1. How personally the consequence affects us (versus consequences that
affect the organization but not us as individuals);
2. How immediately the consequence follows the behavior (short-term has
much more impact);
3. How certain we are that the consequence will occur (the more certain,
the stronger the effect in general -- but Jon and I are leaving out the
complicating factor that certain schedules of consequences using "uncertain"
contingencies have very strong effects. One of us will probably talk about
that at some other time. It explains, for example, the power of the slot
machine -- which has an uncertain payoff but powerfully "glues" people to
their seats.)
So, Personal-Immediate-Certain consequences have the most effect, in
general. And the pleasure people feel from engaging in addictive
behaviors is certainly personal, immediate, and certain -- and positive.
The negative consequences are mostly personal (or, worse, societal),
delayed, and uncertain (in the mind of the addicted person.)
We used to talk about the "Balance of Consequences" to explain why certain
behaviors occurred. But Leo's siphon works equally well. Think of all
the consequences that tend to maintain the behavior as being water on one
side of the hill and all the consequences that would tend to discourage
the behavior as being water on the other -- the two reservoirs connected
by a tube. Which way the water runs depends on the relative height of
water in each reservoir. Personal, immediate, certain consequences tend
to add a lot of water to a reservoir while organizational/societal,
delayed, and uncertain ones add less water.
If water is flowing in one direction now (i.e., certain behaviors are
being maintained), the only way to reverse the flow is by creating a
situation where the water is higher on the other side of the hill. As Leo
indicates, there are a couple of ways to do this. One amounts to adding
water to the lower side, the other to removing water from the higher side
-- or doing both. It's just common sense, and in fact it works this way
in real life, that it will be more costly (in time, effort, money, etc.)
to only add water to the lower side. Yet that's the first thing most
people want to try -- add reinforcers for the new behavior (without
dealing with the reinforcing factors that are sustaining the old
behavior.) Very expensive! I always recommend, first, that one look to
ways of reducing the level of water on the higher side -- then, only if
necessary, add some water to the lower side. This is especially important
in the case where there are negative consequences for the new behavior --
in this case it is crucial to first remove, or reduce, their effect. If
you don't you run the danger of producing a very undesirable side effect
which psychologists call "neurosis."
It has been shown that one can create apparently neurotic behavior by
simultaneously punishing and rewarding someone for the same behavior.
This creates the classic 'approach-avoidance' conflict which can lead to
mental illness.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>