Month: January 2021

Behaviorism for Parents 1

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Behaviorism for Parents – The Basics (Lesson 1)

I often have to teach parents about basic principles of operant conditioning and such, so I finally just wrote it up. Thought I’d share it with you. 

Thorndike’s Law: If you do something, and something good follows, you’re more likely to do that thing again. If you do something, and something bad follows, you’re less likely to do that thing again. (If this also sounds like we’re training a puppy… yes, very much yes.)

Important note: This is only for increasing or decreasing the occurrence of a behavior that already happens. We will talk about adding new behaviors (or more complex behaviors) later. Go ahead and get clients to identify a single behavior they like and one they don’t like for a single kid to use as examples for this teaching.

There are TWO WAYS for something good to follow a behavior. The first is if something pleasant is given (positive reinforcement, but you might just want to call this “reward”). So, if Jackson makes his bed in the morning, he might receive a dollar, or a sticker, or a gum drop, or extra screen time, or a curfew extension, or praise. Important note: rewards only work if they are valued by the recipient. It is a very common mistake to try to reward kids with things that we think they should care about but they really don’t.

The second way for something good to follow a behavior is for something unpleasant that already exists is taken away (negative reinforcement, but maybe you want to call it something like “reprieve.”) So, if Jackson makes his bed in the morning, he might get out of doing an unpleasant chore like washing the dishes. Same caveat – it has to matter to the kid.

Note that is has to be an overall pleasant experience, so if rewards are given grudgingly, or only after lots of nagging, etc., the overall takeaway won’t be pleasant.

SO: If Jackson likes desserts and hates folding laundry, and he makes his bed each day, and each day he gets ice cream after dinner and at the end of the week Mom hangs up his clothes instead of him, he’s much more likely to make his bed in the future.  

These two strategies – reward and reprieve – are the foundation of behavior change. Rewarding behavior you want is much, much, much more effective than trying to punish behavior you don’t want. (More on this in a moment.)

 There are TWO WAYS for something bad to follow a behavior. The first is if something unpleasant occurs (positive punishment, but you might just call it “punishment”). So, if Cinthia hits her younger sister, she gets spanked, or yelled at, or an additional chore. Important note: Punishments only work under very certain circumstances – they have to matter to the child, they have to be consistent across all settings, they have to be unemotionally delivered, and they have to be of moderate intensity. This is tremendously hard to do, especially with things like spankings. A “moderate intensity” spanking varies widely between kids and changes rapidly as they age. Also, the more often you spank, the more of a tolerance builds, and you will rapidly find yourself in a position where the hardest you are willing to spank them doesn’t matter to them anymore. And because they didn’t want to be spanked, and will resent your tyrannical exercise of control, they will begin to take much more pleasure from defying you than displeasure from being spanked and it simply won’t work anymore. Punishment (of all kinds, but certainly physical) also doesn’t get you anywhere in terms of teaching appropriate behavior. So, you don’t get better trained kids. Occasionally, you get cowed kids who seem to behave but are just waiting until they’re big enough to get away or hit back. You also teach them that aggression is the way to exercise control over other people they are bigger than. The much better choice is to choose an incompatible behavior (like listening quietly rather than shouting, telling a parent rather than hitting a sibling, etc.) and reward that behavior instead.

They second way for something bad to follow a behavior is for something pleasant to be taken away (negative reinforcement, or you may want to call it something like “payment”). If you feel you must have “negative consequences for misbehavior,” this is a much better option than punishment. So, if Cinthia hits her little sister, she has to “pay” in terms of losing allowance, an earlier curfew, losing her car or phone or screen time for a certain amount of time. There are still risks associated with this kind of use of your power – specifically that as your kids get older, they’ll just turn to friends to get the things they want – rides, borrowing phones, sneaking out, etc. – so that they aren’t dependent on you to give them the things they want.

 

Overall, the best solution is to create just a few rules for things that your kids are capable of doing that have good reasons behind them that your kids know, then rewarding those valuable behaviors with things your kids value as well.

 

Behaviorism for Parents Volume 2 and Volume 3 are now available!

 

Comment below: Where do your clients get stuck with understanding behavioral principles? 

 

 

 

Forest Wandering (A Couples’ Metaphor)

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Forest Wandering (A Couples’ Metaphor)

In a perfect world, we go through life with our partners sometimes walking hand in hand, and sometimes exploring within earshot, and occasionally going off on our own but easily finding our way back to each other. Totally in sync, perfect partners know each others’ maps perfectly, and keep them continually updated. 

But sometimes, it suddenly seems like our partner is in an entirely different place – they confuse us because they don’t feel the way we expect or don’t respond how we think they will.  Sometimes that comes out like “You’re obviously wrong!” or “Stop being stupid!” or “You hurt me on purpose!” or “You should have known better!”

We entered the forest at the same place, maybe, but they’ve apparently popped out on the other side in a way different place than we have. It’s easy to imagine they’ve teleported, but it’s not true. They walked, same as us. They just walked a different path. Finding out what it was takes courage and openness. But it’s worth it, to know your partner’s landscape! 

When our partners surprise us, first we need to notice we’re surprised – sometimes that can be hard under the hurt or anger, or we’ve let it go on so long that we’re “used to it” by now because “they’re always like that.” But once we realize that they have some wildly different idea than we do, or that they seem to be acting crazy, or that this ostensibly smart/thoughtful/brave/loyal/etc person that we got together with seems to be replaced by an evil clone… we can do the work. And it’s as simple as, “I didn’t expect that [behavior, response, thought]… will you tell me how you got there?”

Simple, but not always easy. 

Rest assured – our partners VERY RARELY get replaced by evil clones. They probably aren’t crazy, malicious, or stupid. We just have to manage our own negative emotions, snap judgments, and other reactionary reactions long enough to hear it.

 

Comment below: Have you experienced this your relationship? How have you taught clients/couples to do this process? 

 

 

 

 

Preposterous Quote – Regret

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Um… sort of.

First of all, after people make choices, they can frame the choice event in terms of what they chose, or in terms of what they did not choose (Valenti & Libby, 2017).

Second, the research is a little more nuanced than that. Yes, “inaction” regrets last longer and are accompanied by a stronger feeling of loss. (Also, we’re more likely to regret non-fixable than fixable situations, and women are more likely to have relationship-related regrets while men are more likely to have work-related regrets. Sorry, I hate it when research supports “stereotypes,” too!) (Morrison & Roese, 2011)

Second, to the degree that we regret more the choices we didn’t make, it’s sort of because of a cognitive fallacy. When we make a “safe” decision and it turns out well, we’re happy with the outcome. When we then find out (or even imagine!) alternative outcomes that would have been better (this is called counterfactual thinking), we feel regret (that is, regret for the thing we “didn’t do” that would have led to the better outcome) and view our own, positive outcome less positively. (Seta et al., 2015)

When we make a “risky” decision and it turns out well, we are both happy with the outcome and relieved that it didn’t turn out badly. When we make a risky decision that turns out badly, we’re unhappy with the outcome, but more likely to use the information for: 

  1. making sense of the world
  2. avoiding future negative behaviors
  3. gaining insight
  4. achieving social harmony
  5. improving ability to approach desired opportunities (presumably because we regret past passivity) (Saffrey et al., 2008)

Add all of that to hindsight bias, and this whole subject is a real mess! 

 

 

Morrison, M., & Roese, N. J. (2011). Regrets of the typical American: Findings from a nationally representative sample. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(6), 576–583. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611401756

Saffrey, C., Summerville, A., & Roese, N. J. (2008). Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions. Motivation and emotion, 32(1), 46–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9082-4

Seta, C. E., Seta, J. J., Petrocelli, J. V., & McCormick, M. (2015). Even better than the real thing: Alternative outcome bias affects decision judgements and decision regret. Thinking & Reasoning, 21(4), 446–472. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2015.1034779

Valenti, G., & Libby, L. K. (2017). Considering roads taken and not taken: How psychological distance influences the framing of choice events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(9), 1239–1254. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217711916

 

 

 

 

 

Measuring Sticks

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Measuring Sticks

Do you remember Mary Poppins’ measuring tape? When she measures Michael, it reads “Rather Stubborn and Suspicious” and when she measures Jane, it reads “Inclined to Giggle Doesn’t put things away.” And what does it say when she measures herself? “Practically Perfect in Every Way.” 

Clients come in to therapy with their own measuring sticks – and based on their own histories, experiences, biases, fears, hopes, etc. – they have a tendency to believe that their measuring stick is the RIGHT measuring stick. They’re quick to assume that their memory of the last argument, their assumption about their partner’s (or boss’ or kids’) intention, their prediction of the future is practically perfect in every way. 

One of the biggest and most pervasive challenges in therapy, I think, is getting clients to trade in their rulers. (After all, they’ve been using this trusty ruler since childhood, probably. It must be a good one!) Sometimes, they’ve been using “trick rulers” that just don’t measure the peril or injustice (etc.) in the world in an accurate way. (Yes! Those are real, and I want to buy one for therapy to use in a fun experiential activity, but I can’t bring myself to spend the $25!) Helping clients to recognize that maybe their genetics, physiology, past trauma, or many other factors have distorted their way of measuring may work better in a metacognitive kind of way than just helping them to measure each situation more accurately. 

Sometimes, they’re using their own ruler to judge someone else’s experience instead of using the other person’s ruler. In those cases, even if they have a super “accurate” ruler (which they probably don’t) or they took notes on the last session with their kid, or they recorded the last argument with their partner, or they pull out the email from their boss – they don’t get any close to understand the other person’s experience or intention by judging with their own rulers. 

I think a lot of this dysfunction comes from a generically nice place. When kids are little, they’re often told things like, “Don’t take Cindy’s doll. How would you feel if Cindy took your doll?” Which is probably better than not thinking about Cindy’s feelings or experience at all, but it makes the mistake of assuming that Cindy will have the same or similar experience to us. But what if we have 100 dolls and Cindy only has 2? We may damage Cindy so much, destroy the relationship, and be completely perplexed about why we’ve lost our best friend! What if we love Barbies and would treasure this stolen Barbie in a deeply forbidden, guilty way, but Cindy hates Barbies and wouldn’t really care? Then we miss an opportunity to ask Cindy if we could share or have her Barbie, Cindy misses out on an experience of altruism, we don’t get to enjoy and treasure the Barbie in a shame-free way, and we both miss out on building intimacy. 

Judging the world, and other people, solely from our own perspectives destines us for failures in empathy. Even if our measuring stick is more accurate than someone else’s. 

Comment below: How have you helped clients to use a different ruler or make theirs more accurate?