Behavior Modification

Modified: 2024-07-17 8:47 PM CDST

• Behavior modification is the application of principles of conditioning to the everyday world.
  • In some sense, all of us are behavior modifiers.
    • But, we may not be aware that we are.
      • For example, suppose you pick up your newborn every time you hear a cry.
      • Soon, you will notice an increase in crying. Why? That child has learned that crying will be reinforced.
    • Parents have to learn to extinguish their infants' crying by not picking them up.

• Behavior modification is also the name given to intentional efforts to modify behavior.
  • They can be as simple as placing objects that need to be taken somewhere in a prominent position.
    • For instance, I put all of the materials I will need for a class on the floor in the doorway of my office.
    • Then, when I leave for class, I have to step over them.
    • Stepping over those materials reminds me to take them.
    • The materials on the floor are a discriminative stimulus for my behavior of picking them up.
    • Or, sometimes my chair will give me a note for a student in my next class.
      • I put the note under the clip of my pen on the outside of my shirt.
      • When I get to class someone will ask me why I have a piece of paper attached to my shirt. Then, I deliver the note.
• Behavior modification can also be used in schools and other settings to promote or to discourage certain behaviors.
  • For example, giving elementary students a gold star for performing certain behaviors is behavior modification.
    • The gold star is a secondary reinforcer.
  • A more complicated form of behavior modification is the token economy.
    • Token economies will have published rules, tokens, and reinforcers.
      • In an adolescent halfway house, for example, a rule might be: Make your bed before 8 am.
      • Adolescents who follow that rule will receive a token.
    • The tokens are secondary reinforcers because they can be "cashed in" in for other reinforcers such as edible treats, soft drinks, or permission to attend a movie.
    • Anything can be a token: a poker chip, a marble, or a value in a smartphone app.
• Certain types of therapy are explicitly based on behavior modification. They include:
  • systematic desensitization,
  • flooding,
  • aversion therapy.
  • Those techniques are covered further in chapter 16.
• Ethical issues surround behavior modification.
  • One issue revolves around its use with certain groups.
  • For example, few question the right of parents to modify their children's behavior.
  • However, do we have the right to apply behavior modification everywhere and anywhere?
  • If people ask to change, then there is usually no problem.
• But if we apply behavior modification to people who do not want to change, that is an altogether different situation.
  • For example, prisoners who are asked to volunteer for violence-reduction training may do so because they know it will likely lead to early parole.
  • So, they are not really volunteers but are being coerced.
  • Some, like the late Anthony Burgess in his novel A Clockwork Orange, have expressed the fear of government control over people via behavior modification.