So behaviorism now. Behaviorism derives from a lot of animal learning theories, but we as people, even though we're a lot more sophisticated and our cognitions and thoughts enter to the equation, a lot of what we do can be predicted and encouraged by what we've learned from the field of behaviorism. What we know, and this probably makes a lot of sense but we have fancy terms for it, is that we tend to engage in behaviors if we get something out of it. So positive reinforcement is the application or is giving somebody a reward for engaging in a behavior. So let's see the most simple level. I want to eat a cookie, and so I eat it and it tastes good, there's my reward. I'm going to keep eating it because I want to keep getting that reward. If I grab a cookie, however, and it's stale and doesn't taste good, I'm unlikely to keep eating that cookie. I didn't say completely unlikely, but I'm unlikely. Negative reinforcement is also something that increases behavior, and what it is, is taking away the aversive stimulus, something that we're finding unpleasant. So you talk before about the really aggressive seat belt and how going, is so annoying that you'll try to get the seat belt on as quickly as possible for you to go and turn the car on because you want to avoid that negative situation, that unpleasant situation. Then this other term, punishment. Punishment is anything that decreases behavior. So you can see that positive reinforcement, I wanted to focus on reinforcement, increase behavior, whereas punishment decreases behavior. Those are pretty tricky terms and they're going to be in the readings too, what the distinctions are, but those are just foundational definitions. So with punishment, there's a cost associated with the behavior, so if you do the behavior, then something aversive happens? It can, yes. Correct. So you learn to avoid doing the behavior if you want to avoid the punishment, so that decrease behavior. Perfect. Yeah. So what this means then is that we can shape behaviors by applying particular reinforcements, rewards, or punishments. I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. What this also means is that we can use these fundamental principles in trying to shape our own behavior, and by shape, I mean change. So first of all, reinforcers. There are different kinds of reinforcers, they're all different levels and types. Typically, any kind of reinforcer is something that we would find rewarding, but a lot of different things are appealing to people. So first we've got tangibles. We can give ourselves stuff, toys, clothes, food. Food's a really big one. Activities can be also really rewarding. So we can work to gain access to some fun. Social reinforcers. This one is actually highly motivating, that people are very driven by praise and attention. Saying something as straight forward as hey, nice to see you today, and great job, and hey, that was cool, whatever, these are very powerful reinforcers for a lot of people. Feedback, even just giving straightforward information is a powerful reinforcer. Then there are things that are token reinforcers. Money is one of these, chips, and alcohol it's known as an NA. Applications to change behavior are very powerful reinforcers for maintaining abstinence. Then you also see this for little kids, very motivated by getting stickers. It's just really cute but I've even tried this with adults and we all like stickers as it turns outs. But you can see that these can have a variety of domains and these can all be potentially powerfully motivating. The point of all of this, well, I'll get to that in a minute, but punishment decreases behavior and this can take a variety of forms as well. So things like aversives, the dinging, pain, a slap on the wrist, obnoxious noises. Then there's also something else called response cost. This is something like giving kids demerits for bad behavior at school, giving people speeding ticket for driving too fast, or taking away privileges like putting somebody in time out, or saying, "Well, then you're not going to be able to watch your program tonight if you didn't do a xyz because you did engage in this bad behavior." So typically we only apply punishment when we want to decrease a negative behavior. Then there's some specialized reinforcement procedures like shaping or trying to, if somebody, for example, wants to engage in 30 minutes of physical activity a day, we would start by trying to have them only do five minutes and increasing that by five minute increments over the several days. There's also the specialized reinforcement procedure called the Premack principle, where you make the access to a preferred activity contingent upon completing the less preferred activity. This, I think, is far in a way the most powerful of all the behavior change strategies, and this is one that I typically make myself do or I use myself. So for example, here's the old disclosure again thing, I love trash TV, I love it, but I feel guilty watching it because I have so many other ways that I should be spending time and so I'm either going to be cutting into sleep in order to watch, I'm embarrassed to say I like The Bachelor. I basically can't really justify this even though it's a total guilty pleasure of mine. So what do I do? Now I exercise while watching The Bachelor, and as a result, all of my other trash TV, I've moved on now, but that has made it completely contingent. So I'm no longer allowed to watch The Bachelor unless I've exercised, but now it's almost like will exercise for Bachelor access, so I'm actually doing it at the same time riding stationary bike, and it's remarkably effective. So these are all other examples of like, I will let myself watch a TV show after I'm done reading this chapter, studying, or xyz. Then this notion of the contingency contract, which is where you're actually writing out what it is you intend to do. So I'm going to exercise 30 minutes a day for at least five days this week and I will not allow myself access to my trash television show until I've done that. So that is that.
