Jerry Mertens and Erin Van De Hey
St. Cloud State University
Many introductory psychology texts have traditionally given section(s) or chapter(s) on a variety of unrelated psychology topics. Little time is spent connecting chapters or sections of these very different kinds of materials. This handout discusses one topic, negative reinforcement, as a topic usually covered in the learning unit found in introductory psychology texts. We will look for relationships or implications of negative reinforcement in a variety of general psychology areas/or daily life applications.
As a review, let us use the definition of negative reinforcement (see for example, Gray's Introductory Psychology book glossary (Gray, page G-12), ...a stimulus whose removal increases the likelihood that the response will recur. Two other useful definitions:
Escape is when a response increases in frequency because that response results in the REMOVAL of an aversive condition.
Avoidance is when the frequency of a response increases because it PREVENTS an aversive condition.
Below are a variety of examples:
1. A Threat:
A threat is when someone says, "Do it or else." They are saying to do a certain behavior to prevent the “or else,” (the aversive stimulus).
2. Fear Runs the World:
"Fear runs the world," is a quote at the end of Jack Michael's article, “A Behavioral Perspective on College Teaching,” used in the general introduction segment at the beginning of most of my courses. This statement is a reflection of the widespread use of negative reinforcement in our daily life.
3. Shower Water Temperature:
Too hot or too cold water temperature in a shower (an aversive stimulus) can be removed by a behavior that increases hot or cold water.
4. Addiction: (Carlson p. 119-120)
The addictive effects when using certain drugs could remove a person from the aversive world at least momentarily:
a. Intoxication Effect (Gray p. 632): the short-term effects for which a drug is usually taken. Taking drugs can remove a person from the aversiveness of their life, momentarily.
b. Withdrawal Effect (Gray p. 633, and Carlson p. 119 & 530): the aversive effect that occurs when the drug is removed from the system, e.g. DT's (Delirium Tremens). Taking the addictive drug could reduce aversive withdrawal effects and thus reinforce the addiction.
c. Gray then presents what he terms a “behavioral position”, which apparently appears to Gray to be different from a and b above: (Gray p. 634). He states that one might take a drug for its "relief" effect of a powerful consequence. What appears to be missed by Gray is that all three have negative reinforcing features.
5. Cognitive Dissonance: (See Gray p. 519 - 520 top, and Carlson p. 495-497)
From Gray's glossary, "Cognitive Dissonance is the discomfort associated with the awareness of disagreement or lack of harmony between two or more positions." One might view it as an end to aversive disharmony. Like so many mentalistic definitions, this concept of cognitive dissonance is often presented in
ambiguous mentalistic language, which makes it less useful than a more parsimoniously defined concept or principle. With some work, real world relationships related to dissonance may be found.
The classic cognitive dissonance paradigm (i.e., Festinger, 1957) asks a participant to do tasks which are (by most measures) very boring. The experimenter then asks the participant to get another person to do the task by telling them how interesting the task was. The participants are paid either $1 or $20. One might contend $20 is enough of a motivator for lying; thus people who are highly rewarded need no other factor to change their behavior about the task. Subjects paid only $1 mo re frequently "re-evaluated" the task, and after participation and payment, they rated the task more favorably than those who were paid $20.
When a person takes a look at it in more objective terms, he/she can see a relationship to the learning principle of negative reinforcement (aversive events). Cognitive Dissonance is the concept that compels people to reduce the discomfort (a conditioned aversive stimulus - CAS) from two or more of their behaviors being inconsistent. For example, let's say you are shoveling crap for 5 cents an hour and I come by and find out you are only making 5 cents an hour. I say, "How dumb! You are not even close to receiving minimum wage. Your job stinks both literally and figuratively. It is unhealthy shoveling that crap. You could get sick and die, from the germs in that crap. (Even a garbage person gets $20 an hour, and all one can eat! Joke?) Wait till I tell your mother or father what you do for 5 cents an hour. Will you be embarrassed." My verbally stated aversives are strong. What can you do to get rid of the aversives? With certain learning histories the "cognitive dissonance" notion might work as follows to get you out of this aversive situation.
One: The statement "I need the exercise from shoveling” could reduce a certain amount of the aversiveness. Your comment, "I need the exercise," has much the same stimulus effects as adding heat to extreme cold, i.e., heat rids one of freezing aversive stimulus. Likewise, the exercise answer may remove some aversives in the crap shoveling. The quoted statement can reduce the aversive effects by offering some other
supposed cause (a more noble sounding cause) for doing a behavior for poor consequences (shoveling crap for 5 cents an hour) that, to some, looks stupid.
Two: Perhaps an even better comment, "In addition to exercise, I am helping a poverty program and their organic farm. I am being ecologically sound. I am taking in trash, crap if you prefer, and then I am saving it, for fertilizing techniques. We are not polluting the earth with incorrect disposal or poor usage of waste products. The world needs to emulate me. Everyone should sacrifice some comfort for the salvation of our environment. We must learn how to reuse waste in the environment, and we all need to be, like me, ecologically sound.” With that kind of response, not only may the aversiveness be reduced, but you could run for president, king of the world, or more.
Let us look at another personal example of a behavior that has some cognitive dissonance features. Up until recently, I still used two beat-up, rusty-looking, ancient push lawn mowers without motors that the
previous owners of houses left behind as junk when we moved in long ago. I should be embarrassed to use such a pile of junk for a lawn mower. It was heavy and hard to push. It did not cut the grass very low to the ground, so I had to mow the lawn more often. I have had some students of mine drop by my house while I
was cutting the grass, and they laughed at me. EXERCISE, ECONOMICS, and being ECOLOGICALLY
sound was adefense of the “junk lawn mowers”. My wife, probably under the control of negative reinforcement, even bought me a power mower as a present a few years ago. As of this writing, she is now mowing the yard. She even bought a light weight electric mower for herself. (and besides, the lawn does look much better when she mows it.)
Let us examine all of the escape behavior involved in this example.
-My wife escapes a lousy looking lawn by taking over the lawn mowing duties.
-I escape hard work by having my wife take over the lawn mowing duties.
Let me use one more example in this area where dissonance plays an important part. I have been a sloppy dresser for as far back as I can remember. I was with James Meredith when he became the first Black student at "Ole Miss." I ate with Meredith fairly regularly, and the U.S. marshals always sat at the next table protecting Meredith from those who did not want him at the University of Mississippi. One of my
biggest concerns was when Meredith left the table, so did the U.S. marshals! I recall a southern white chap saying to his buddies as they walked by me in the student union, "Look at Mertens. Look at his shoes. Our niggers (his words, not mine) wear better shoes than Mertens." I should NOT be telling you that story. There does not appear to be a positive reinforcer for saying something bad about my self. I am obviously punishing myself by telling you about me being a lousy dresser, and my being made fun of. This guy was trying to insult me, and here I am telling you this story. I tell this story a lot. I am able to verbally save myself from being made fun of for being the world's worst dresser. I find it easy to verbally change the nature of the event; I don't dress for success. I want to win on my own merits and NOT on the merits of the "rags" I wear. I want to be the world's worst dresser. I believe people should judge people on their merits. What they do, and NOT their color, gender, sexual preference, religion, looks or the way they dress and their manner of speech. I want to be a part of this movement where people do NOT judge on color, gender, what they wear, etc. Diversity has many forms and shapes. I believe that accepting different dress and language forms are part of (generalization gradient) of diversity seen also in race, gender, etc. A university can have a problem of diversity surrounding suppression of differences in content of a course, as well as in the areas of race, gender, etc. I am going to dress like a slob, that I am, to promote the diversity cause. (And, besides, I am cheap!)
Some of my in classroom language is selected for the same diversity reason. Judge the important behavioral repertoires of the person, not if he talks just like you. Diversity is easy when it is what we like. Where diversity has its test is when there is a difference. One approach can be more effective, and we can still have diversity as to what alternatives were offered.
With a certain learning history, an aversive event arises from inconsistencies between what a person says and what a person does. This can be traced to a history of punishment for inconsistencies between verbal and nonverbal behavior. Many facets of daily society, and many parents, teachers, friends, law enforcement officials, etc., insist upon a relatively high degree of correspondence between what you say and do.
Ben Franklin supposedly had gained the favor of an individual who disliked him by lending the man a very rare and expensive book. The individual apparently lent the book out of social convention when it was offered. After borrowing the book, the individual re-evaluated Franklin concluding that he was not as bad as he thought.
People frequently encounter themselves using verbal behavior to lessen aversives on a wide variety of behaviors. There is an old saying used to support this lessening of aversives, “There is never a wrongful guilty person on death row.”
Recently, I heard a cognitive dissonance pusher talk of a safe sex program he worked on. I have tried to look a bit more behaviorally at his example here.
Let us see if you can apply this “dissonance model - negative reinforcement” to increase condom use in a sexually active male who was identified for his unsafe sex practices in a college sexuality class.
Try at this point to consider the problem. I will try to further prompt the behavior in each of the lettered items below. Try to understand the concept on each step as you go along.
A. Remember, we need some dissonance (disharmony) when resolving the dissonance results in condom use.
B. This dissonance will involve two verbal repertoires.
C. What verbal repertoire of the college students could the college instructor control that might produce disharmony between his failure to use condoms?
D. The college instructor taught a course where he could give each of the males an assignment to talk with groups of local high school students.
E. Some local high school groups needed some college students to come in to talk about safe sex.
F. Dissonance then exists between the college males talking about their use of condoms and safe sex, and their practice of non-use.
6. Freud Anxiety:
Freudian notion of anxiety or discomfort says that certain verbal behaviors (e.g. defenses) can rid the person of anxiety or discomfort. (Gray p. 590 and Carlson p. 570)
7. Survival and Adaptation In Evolutionary Conceptualization:
There can be seen some relationship to avoidance of species-extinction, from the evolutionary use of the term, extinction. For those familiar with Lamarck in Biology, this is not a Lamarckian notion, i.e., those who learn to adapt survive. (Gray p. 81-82 & 85-86.)
8. Cold Temperatures:
Coming into a warm house from the outside cold air is an escape from an aversive cold environment.
9. Hot Weather:
Air conditioning can terminate the aversive hot temperature.
10. Defensive:
Defensive attitude or the defending of the self against aversives. (Gray, p. 514.)
11. Money:
Money, like many other situations in life, may have both positive and negative reinforcing properties, i.e., avoid the “misery” of no money or poverty.
12. Social Distance:
Disassociation is when association or socialization is aversive, and with a certain learning history, a person can reduce aversiveness by disassociation; by getting away from the situation. (Gray p. 635-637),
13. Sleep:
Excess sleep can be an escape when being awake is the "pits" or in an aversive world (Gray p. 220).
14. Fantasy:
The amount of aversiveness in some people's real lives sometimes makes it look as if fantasy is a better choice. By doing so, they avoid the aversiveness by "living" in a different world, if they have such a learning history.
15. Crowding and Aggression:
Aggression against crowding may possibly reduce the aversive crowding.
16. Verbal Behavior:
A. Difference in verbal expressions (1) and (2) below. If the person was wrong, being that the object was not blue – you were not quite so wrong in answer (1) below.
(1) "I think it is blue."
(2) "It is blue."
B. Difference in verbal expressions (1) and (2) below. If wrong, you are not quite as much to blame in (1):
(1) "If you don't believe red is blue, read what Aristotle said about it."
(2) "Let me tell you why red is blue, because..."
17. Defense Mechanism:
When one defends oneself against aversiveness: (Gray p. 571-573).
A. Defense Mechanism - reduces anxiety through self-reduction of the aversive (Gray p. 571-573).
B. Repression - keeping aversive stimulation out of one's repertoire.
C. Displacement - one's activities are directed towards safer and more acceptable activities. (sublimation)
D. Reaction Formation - avoid frightening aversive stimuli by putting in a safer opposite.
E. Projection - the aversive condition stated as if it was someone else's fault.
F. Rationalization - The sour grapes are beyond my reach on a tall vine. “I don't want the grapes; the grapes would be sour. The grapes wouldn't be any good anyway.”
(There exists a longer teaching module on defense mechanisms as it relates to negative reinforcement written by the same author).
18. Famous Historical Quotes Citing Similarity of Religious Properties to the Concept of Negative Reinforcement:
(Below is an alternate view focusing on how religious behavior can be viewed as more noble. The essence of the quotes below is that human beings are taught to be aware of their small nature in the universe and they do not have learned repertoires to handle the situation. They are confronted with behavior
requirements they are unable to handle. They find a need for an answer to these aversive problems and they select from their repertoire God/Religion as an explanation.
- "Religion is an escape mechanism." Aldous Huxley
- "Religion is the opium of the people." Karl Marx
- "Religion is the escape from frustration and limitations." Julian Huxley
-"What is it: is the human only a blunder of God, or God a blunder of human?" Neitsche
- "Religion is human's attempt to find a road to avoid obstacles and danger of life." E. Sapir
- "Religion is an obsession neurosis." Sigmund Freud
19. Not Necessarily A Property of Religion:
Religious behavior does not, by its intrinsic nature, have the negative features the above mentioned "famous" quotes refer to. Patrick Henry, not the early U.S. historical patriot, but the director of a nearby ecumenical center states, “that religious behavior can have just the opposite effect religion is given above. NOT an escape from the real world problems, but religion is the learned repertoire that keeps people working on world problems.” If a person has a different learning history, religious stimuli can be those events that make him/her work for a real world solution to our society’s problems. Religious training
can be a factor that leads one to reject the poor, stereotypical answers offered by many others. This concept is NOT new in religious circles. I remember from my youth, a religious program centered in the following parameters: "When you work, work like everything depends on you; when you play, play like everything depends on you; and when you are involved in moral religious behavior, do it like everything depends on your religious behavior."
20. Reading (and real life) and Aversives (out of sight):
Consequences that are not applied tend to be major problems in daily life. Here are two interesting jokes that illustrate this point:
1. John, the very heavy smoker, read so much about the evil effects of smoking; he decided to give up reading.
2. Joe, the heavy polluter, read so much about the bad effect of pollution on the environment; he gave up reading.
In real life, I had a relative who came to visit me during the time I worked as a Psychology intern at a mental hospital here in Minnesota. She was concerned about the aversiveness of working in such a situation. Like the old expression, “out of sight out of mind.” If they are not working in the situation then the aversive stimuli simply goes away, as my relative viewed it. Of course, problems do not simply go away when ignored, and in mental institutions, patients do not go away because they are out of sight.
21. Increasing creativity or inventiveness:
a. "Necessity is the parent of ingenuity” or
b. "An aversive event is the parent of inventiveness."
Some people believe that in order for certain desired behaviors to occur, they must have an aversive event. A person's learning history may not necessitate aversive control to get ingenuity or inventiveness to occur (whatever these are).
22. Funding of Science in Our Culture:
Most often, governmental allocations or funding for science is a political issue. This usually occurs only when the cultural group is threatened by war or another aversive event science can cure or help with.
23. Building Stadiums at the Government's Expense:
This subject gets more attention when professional teams threaten to leave the city. People may compromise their values to avoid what some view as a bad happening, i.e. keeping pro sports teams from leaving. Is this just the tip of the iceberg? e.g., “I will move my factory and all the jobs for people of this
community, unless you build me a better factory.” “Give me a tax break or I will move my world famous
place from your town.” Etc.
24. Ruled Governed Behavior (i.e., the delay of the reinforcement issue):
A more complex example of negative reinforcement is rule-governed behavior. Behavior is controlled by immediate consequence. If this is true, then why do people's behaviors often appear to be controlled by the pursuance of distant goals? There is a distinct connection between the control of current behavior, and the setting of distant goals. A "rule" is the name given to a guideline that allows a person to achieve an objective or goal. This goal is usually too delayed to have any direct control on the person's behavior itself; but just because a person has a far off goal doesn't mean that this goal doesn't influence the immediate environment. Control by immediate consequences still influences the behavior. Long-term goals are "indirect-acting contingencies" because they can not directly control behavior by themselves. They can, however, set up the conditions for "direct-acting contingencies.” For example, if a goal is designed to be met one year into the future, present behavior would not be controlled because the ultimate goal can not be completed in any single action. Rules control behavior by modifying the environmental conditions around behavior.
Understanding this rule governed behavior point necessitates an understanding of the concept of establishing operations. This will help us understand how rule-governed behavior can act as an example of
a negative reinforcement. Establishing operations increase the sensitivity or effectiveness of reinforcers and aversive conditions. There are numerous ways to increase the effectiveness of reinforcers and aversive conditions. Establishing operations refers to those methods, for example, to increase the reinforcing effect
of water on an organism, the organism would be deprived of water, feed salt to induce thirst pellets, etc. All of these, to some degree, dehydrate the organism. Dehydration causes water to be reinforced. Rules can
also cause people to be more sensitive to certain reinforcers and aversive conditions.
Here's how negative reinforcers control behavior within rule-governed behavior. Malott states, "The rule statement is an establishing operation that establishes noncompliance with the rule as an aversive motivating condition. For example, you state the following rule to yourself: If I don't start reading this chapter, I'm not going to be ready for the quiz. After you've stated that rule, your goofing off produces an aversive condition." (Malott, p. 377).
Actually, having "goofed off" and aversively flunking a test in the past will probably increase the effectiveness of the rule in this case.
Malott continues, "So stating the rule and not working is like turning on the shock in an escape experiment. And working on your assignment is the escape response. Perhaps, just starting to work reduces the aversive event a bit; and finishing the assignment may allow you to escape completely from this self-generated aversive condition. Is it this way with you?" (Malott, p. 377). The statement of the rule has noncompliance resulting in an aversive condition.
25. Example From the Play "Tony and Tina's Wedding":
"It's better if your guy doesn't get you a Valentine's gift, because the guilt gift he gives you the next day will be even bigger!"
26. Aversiveness and Time Left to Do the Task:
The aversiveness of a situation is determined by the amount of time that it takes learning to complete the task and the amount of time that it takes to finish the task. The longer one procrastinates studying before a test, the less time available to go through everything that one needs to study. Running out of time tends to
be an aversive event. One way to avoid the aversiveness of this situation would be to study now.
27. Negative Reinforcement and Authority: (Carlson p. 136-137)
In class, a student brings up an argument to a position a teacher presents in a lecture. The teacher points out some of the obvious weaknesses in the student's argument. The student then responds with, "I saw this
news piece on television last night, and they wouldn't present it if it was not true."
In most cases the student would not say what he or she reads in the newspaper or sees on TV is always correct. In terms of negative reinforcement, the student's quote in this situation can reduce the aversiveness by switching the error to the TV or newspaper.
28. Depression and Negative Reinforcement:
Avoidance can play a role in what is called depression. Ferster suggests, “that when certain behaviors have been reduced by the withdrawal of reinforcers (or presentation of aversive event), subsequent presentation
of the discriminative stimuli for these behaviors generates avoidance behavior.” This avoidance behavior
could be depressive behavior or withdrawing from social interaction (or withdrawal from that situation), spending all day in bed, and other so called depressed behaviors.
Fester states, “that the agitation, pacing, compulsive talking, and the rest of the behaviors often found with severely depressed patients can avoid other aversive stimuli such as silence or inactivity.”
Lewinsohn states, “that for the chronically depressed person, the aversive stimuli resulting from the lack of social skills may increase the depression process (1972).”
Some individuals end their life as the only available escape from the aversive event. The stimuli from the private event may be escaped only in death. Wilson & Hayes (1993) and Skinner (1971) suggest, “that the organism tries to avoid aversive private events.”
Below are references for this section on depression:
Fester, C.B. (1965) Classification of Behavioral Pathology. L. Krasner and L.P. Ullmann (Eds.) research in
Behavior Modification, New York, Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Fester, C.B. (1973) A Functional Analysis of Depression, American
Psychologist, 28, 857-870.
Hayes, S.C. & Wilson, K.G. (1993). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Altering the Verbal Support for Experimental Avoidance, The Behavior Analyst.
Lazarus, A. A. (1968). Learning Theory and the Treatment of Depression, Behavior Research and Therapy,
6, 83-89.
Lewinsohn, P.M.(1972). Clinical and Theoretical Aspects of Depression, H. E. Adams and W. K. Boardman (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Psychology, New York, Pergamon Press.
29. Reduction of an Aversive Event in Some Major Career Decisions in My Life:
Below, I have taken four major career planning steps made over the years in my own life and I have attempted to show how the reduction of aversives have played an important role. Certainly, there have been many other areas and other learning principles that were involved in these career plans.
I have tried to help students by using these four decisions from my life to serve as a case study and as a possible stepping stone for their own career decisions. Not having a career plan can be a very aversive event. Hopefully, my willingness to be public about private aspects of my life (e.g. "tough" career plans), will serve as samples for students to use in making their own "tough" career decisions. Career planning has a strong negative reinforcer built into its process. Taking that step into the aversive unknown job future can be a scary and aversive condition. Good career planning can reduce this aversive. Below are the four personal career planning steps from my life, first listed, and then one at a time looked at in more detail:
(A) How negative reinforcement played a role to reverse my high school days view to not go to college. I
took the first step to go to college to reduce a certain aversive stimuli associated with a factory job.
(B) How I took the step towards Psychology as a major in an undergraduate school.
(C) How a rigorous scientific, experimental, critical/skeptical, inquired based and behavioral orientation became my area of focus in Psychology.
(D) How the magic interests developed; my critical look at extraordinary claims when they are stated as causes of human behavior.
A. How I Decided to Go to College:
I had no intention of going to college when I graduated from high school in June 1954. I found a factory job a few weeks into the summer following graduation from high school. Very early in the time I spent working at the machine in the tannery, I did a very basic practical math problem. I calculated that since I was 18 and I would probably work until the age 65, and if I stuck hides in a steam brush machine 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, how many hides would I handle in a life time? I asked myself if that was the kind of life goal that I wanted. Three months later in September, I went to college during
the daytime at an extension of the University of Wisconsin in my hometown. I still had to work nights in
the tannery for economic survival. It is hard to guess how many times parents, friends, grade school or high school teachers, etc., must have tried in some way to influence me (and others) to come to do some form of career plan. Nothing like a real little aversive stimuli to make some responses. That tannery, it like really stunk. How to pass this message of early career preparations on to students has been an interest of mine.
B. How Psychology Became a Major:
I thought psychology was pretty "dumb" after I took the Introductory to Psychology course at the University of Maryland at night while I was in the Air Force. Some time after taking this introductory psychology course while still in the Air Force, I volunteered as a "human guinea pig" research subject in a double blind military experiment. I found out later that the substance in these experiments was an LSD derivative. I found this out by stealing my medical records while on a dose of the drug. After the medical volunteer's duty was over, I had a chance to read about LSD. I was stationed at that time in Washington DC. D. C. was a good area for finding and reading about new medical research. This reading of the LSD literature led me, for the first time, to seriously consider the study of psychology. The condition that was aversive to me, my lack of knowledge about LSD, was reduced some as I learned something about LSD.
Trying to hook students on the reinforcers of science and career planning has been an interest I continue to work on. Working on the problems of career planning can reduce the aversives that arise from the uncertainty of the future.
C. How A Rigorous Scientific Behavioral Approach to Psychology Became the Route I Took!
My undergraduate psychology training was a hodge-podge type of an education where all things that came down the educational pike were to be saluted by the student as important, learned, and believed as being part of psychology. Apparently by some unplanned and undefined method, some magical osmosis -like
process was about to put together all of the unrelated gems that I learned. Gradually, through graduate
training, I was moved into a more skeptical position. All psychology proclamations and data were NOT equal. All these positions should not be believed. I began to see the usefulness for a good science repertoire to rid the aversiveness of the chaos and hodge-podge of the variety of weird statements that were proposed to explain the causes of human behavior. Seeing current and past students use good science in their professional and personal life is a powerful reinforcer to me.
D. Magic's Relationship to My Approach To Psychology:
Early in my teaching career at St. Cloud State University, students would raise questions such as; "How do you, as a experimental behavioristic psychologist, account for psychics doing things such as PK, mind reading, metal bending etc.?" I searched to develop a good answer to these questions. What you see in my
magic and psychological analysis of psychics extra ordinary explanation today is in part what I have found
over the past years in this research. The major repertoire I now have was learned by reducing the aversiveness of not having an answer to these questions raised by students.
30. Negative Reinforcement and Need for Science Applied to Nonsensical Explanations in Daily Life: In my own life, I came to a point where I saw the need for more emphasis on science in my every day explanations of things. In looking at human behavior disciplines, like psychology and other social sciences, I see so many aversive nonsense type explanations. Without science coming to the forefront, I see nothing separating most of the current social science psychology efforts from the likes of: witchcraft, astrology, the crusades, the inquisition, boiling mentally ill patients, and many other harmful concepts which have been held to be true by humans.
In my life (and I believe many others do the same), I have found it necessary to go beyond the norm (the call of duty) for certain learned causes. At times in my working on a cause, I have thrown out the window: safety, "personal well being," academic promotions, money, popularity, comfort of a position, etc. In my need to, "Walk the walk not just talk the talk." At times in my professional and personal life, I have seen the need for putting my actions where my mouth is. Below, I have briefly summarized a few illustrations of this important point:
A. Firewalking:
I put my actions (walking) were my mouth is. For many years, I have taught the science principles as stated by Jearl Walker, James Randi, Bernard Leikind, etc., about firewalking. Firewalking is not made possible by the uses of a trance, religious experiences, or mind over matter; your beliefs do not protect your feet
from the hot coals. In a sense, the principle of science is what "protects" your feet. I didn't have the chance
to try firewalking until a meeting at Valley Forge. Given the opportunity to walk on fire, the reinforcer of being a good teacher demanded that I demonstrate this scientific explanation. According to those who were there and have been involved in previous firewalking demonstrations, more firewalkers experienced burns than usual at Valley Forge. This appeared to be due to the inadequate use of scientific principles by the person in charge. Compared to most of the other firewalkers at Valley Forge, I came through with little-to- no damage. I attribute this to my use of the scientific principles that I learned involving firewalking. I did not go along with the questionable techniques taught in that particular demonstration at Valley Forge. I believe this experience adds to my repertoire enabling me to teach effectively about false claims of firewalking and related extra-ordinary explanations. This knowledge reduces the aversiveness of the nonsense explanations.
B. Flying Without an Airplane -- Transcendental Meditation (TM) Style:
I spent most of a quarter break vacation at Maharishi International University (M.I.U.) in Fairfield, Iowa. I went there not to argue with the people there, but I wanted to try to listen and gain some grasp of why anybody (college faculty and students, in this case) could come to the view they hold to. This view is that with a mantra and some TM concepts, their body could pick itself up and fly/levitate to another place. I went there to try to get an understanding why someone could come to what, to me, was a weird position. It was important to me; the time, money, and vacation spent to go to MIU could have been spent on many other more fun things. Yet, the time interacting with faculty and students there gave me, I believe, a better teaching repertoire which made me more effective in producing responses geared towards reducing the aversive nonsense of TMers who claim to be able to fly without an airplane.
C. Can a Person's Will or Their Intention, By Itself, Change a Computer's Output?
This may sound silly at one level of analysis, but this is the position of an engineer, Dean Robert Jahn, at prestigious Princeton University. It is probably the psychic world's biggest and most prestigious selling
effort at this moment. I took some vacation time to visit and interact with the Robert Jahn's project staff at
Princeton University. I visited with the people who contend one can modify a computer's random number generator by a person's intention and will. The time and money spent made me, I believe, a little bit better at the analysis of this type of extraordinary claim which I see as aversive neglect of good science procedures.
31. Negative Reinforcement and General Problem Solving: A problem can be defined as the difference between:
A. A current situation.
B. The way it should be.
The difference between A and B, above can be aversive and it is reduced by conflict reduction, by solving the problem. That is the difference between A and B, above.