Caution: This is a long one and yet only a small slice of the topic…
A Science of Behavior or the Behavior of Scientists?
B.F. Skinner, the name most associated with behavioral science, said that his goal was to establish a science of behavior. He wasn’t the only one and he wasn’t the first, but he was the most vocal and influential in the early to late 20th Century. A reasonable question in our eighth decade of academic behavior analysis is, did they succeed? I think the answer is a simple, “not yet.” For the 21st Century we could add the retort, ‘Not likely, ever’. They have so mucked up their chance that it’s beyond salvage. It is a derelict discipline becalmed in an academic Sargasso Sea.[1]
You might wonder why I am qualified to make such a sweeping condemnation. I came from lowly origins to a career as a behaviorist. However, my mother taught me to read at age four. My father, a theologian and preacher, taught me to be skeptical and analytical. That meant that I could ingest information and process it from theoretical to practical. I have been doing that, ever since. Now back to becoming a behaviorist.
Behaviorist is a quirky term that once had a distinct meaning but is now so watered down that it means someone with an academic background and an interest in behavior. I didn’t have the former. If there was a real science of behavior, I would be admitted to the club based on the seriousness and the breadth of my work. I have been recognized for such by the largest professional organization of behavioral psychologists. That is the Association for Behavior Analysis, International. They invited me to join as a full member in 1992 and I have given many invited addresses, chaired panel discussions and participated at many levels in that organization. I was also awarded their most prestigious award – unsolicited.
However, in the broader category of behaviorists, a sorority-like club, I can be excluded because I do not agree with those who make the rules. Having been in a real fraternity, long ago, I know their characteristics. Since academic behavior analysis is club of primarily old men controlling young doe-eyed women, the term fraternity fits perfectly. The broader category of behaviorists are primarily fragile but zealous women who push their own agendas. They fit the description of a sorority.
The Place to Learn About Behavior:
In my mid-20’s, I was the shelter manager of a humane society, humane investigator, kennel cleaner, adoption counselor, euthanasia technician, working dog trainer and handler and dreaded dog catcher. I didn’t like the job, but I was good at it. At my peak I was killing about a ton of dogs and cats each month, while adopting out no more than a couple hundred pounds. It was a literal dead end.
For each of those animals there was a human who had come to the dead end of pet ownership. They were unable to control the behavior of their animals and responsibly decided to give the animal to an organization dedicated to receiving unwanted pets. I heard thousands of people ask the same question – “What can I do to keep my pet?” They looked me in the eyes – and theirs were often filled with tears. The great majority were not the stereotypical indifferent and calloused people – the boogey man of the ‘humane industry’. They were serious and broken- hearted dog and cat owners with that pivotal question. I had no answers for them. Neither did the experts. Though I researched diligently and read prodigiously, I never found practical solutions for even the most mundane problems. Note: “Exit polls” never get the truth. When a person exits the shelter after giving up their animal, they lie in self-defense.
My Reaction to Acclaimed Expertise:
After several years of investigation into the topic, primarily by digesting the accounts and claims of renowned experts, my most common thought was “what dogs are they talking about?” That is because the 5,000-ish dogs I handled each year did not behave as the experts claimed. To say that I became skeptical of experts is an understatement. The old Southern truism rang in my head when I read the next book by the next expert on how to fix animal behavior problems – ‘that dog don’t hunt’. The term describes an irony because dogs are supposed to hunt. The metaphor comments, albeit a bit sarcastically, that a procedure, item or contraption does not do what it is supposed to do. For me, Skinner’s science of behavior, AKA behavior analysis, “don’t hunt.” If you analyze it objectively, you’ll see that the behavior analytic dog doesn’t put a pheasant in your game bag.
To understand my perspective, consider this fact – science has only one. That bias is called veritas – truth for truth’s sake. If one holds a bias other than telling the truth, that person is not a scientist. Likewise, if a methodology, discipline or practice holds biases that are not directly connected to truthful behavior, it is not science. Science reveals nature. You can’t be part of the scientist club unless you fervently believe that. You can be part of the behavioral science club, though. That is where myths abound and false or incomplete narratives hold sway. You may call it an academic discipline, but it ain’t science. It is better described in terms reserved for medieval monastic groups: catechism, liturgy, dogma. It best exemplifies a monastic cult. Don’t tell the truth, say what gains ascendence in your cult.
The Creation of a Scam:
You may ask, how can this possibly be? Our culture fairly worships all things psychological. How can a fuzzy pseudo-science rule the day? What ever happened to learned doctors discovering how the brain works? It’s simple. If you inject fiction into the narrative from the very beginning, it’s garbage in, garbage out. Tack on the gravitas of academic institutions and you’re home free. After all, the motto of Harvard University is…veritas. They wouldn’t lie, would they? Of course they would. That’s where the money and prestige lie.
The Bold Strategy:
How did pseudo-scientists hijack veritas? They arrived at a plan that would elevate their status and put money in their pockets. Veritas wasn’t part of that plan. They asked, how does one acquire the trappings of science and academia? What’s the best practical strategy? If they were honest, what they really wanted to know was slightly different. What’s the best way to create a fictional account of something? (After all, Skinner studied English Literature as an undergraduate – the art of writing fiction in the English language.) So, they chose two things that are known to do that; numbers and jargon. That makes you sound serious and intelligent. One problem, which we will discuss later. If the numbers are not really connected to observable reality, they are effectively unquestionable and unproven. What if the numbers don’t match anything? Then you solve the problem a different way. You are the only person with numbers. Therefore, the numbers are important because you say they are important. If you are too simple to see their value, the problem is yours. That is called gas-lighting by the way.
What kind of numbers?
So, what did Skinner (and others) decide? They had to pick what kind of numbers they used. I mean, you may count all kinds of things, but they must somehow be connected to the topic. They needed a mountain of data – the accumulation of specific numbers. What might that be?
Remember, they created an arbitrary dichotomy of reinforcement vs. punishment. In the early days, Skinner classified everything as a function of some kind of reinforcement. This was cumbersome and confusing. That’s when the reinforcement vs. punishment dichotomy emerged. However, those early behaviorists opposed the study and use of punishment, so it was the same as an exclusively reinforcement-based examination...and only half of that. They did acknowledge that you can strengthen behavior with nastiness and called it ‘negative reinforcement’. However, because it was perceived as nasty, they didn’t explore its properties or suggest its uses.
By the mid-1980’s, the presence of serious studies of punishment started to decline as the ideological ‘pro-nice’ crew started running the show. (At the 2009 conference of the Association for Behavior Analysis, of 1500 total presentations, there were eight that considered the practical use of punishment. Five were presented by staff from the Judge Rottenberg Center and three were by me – a non-academic. Shortly thereafter, the creator of JRC was shoved out and I stopped doing presentations for that group. In 2010 there were no presentations about punishment – and that is true to this day. )
The Decision: What to Count
The final selection was a single datum to describe the behavior of two primitive species: rats and pigeons. For rats, they picked the rate of response of ‘lever pressing’. The rat behavior was pressing a little lever mounted to the wall of a small box. (Later called a Skinner Box for its creator) The animal had to maintain pressing the lever during the experiment. That generated data. That generated graphs that allowed one to see the rate of behavior waxing and waning. I’ll let you into a secret. This perspective requires a fluctuation of the numbers.
Note: Ask yourself if that is a broad criterion for studying behavior. Is there nothing important about static behaviors? Is which behavior you do not important, merely how often?
The Bedrock: Peckers and Pressers
Pigeons were required to peck a circular lighted key mounted to the wall of a box. Oops. We already have an apples to oranges problem. Pigeons peck, instinctively – like puppies that chew on things to identify edibles. Rats do not press levers instinctively. It is a ‘learned’ behavior. You might ask why that matters. It matters because the two types of data require a skew to make them apples to apples. No such skew was ever identified. After all, early behaviorists obeyed the contemporary philosophical argument of ‘nature vs. nurture’. They came down on the side they promised they could handle – nurture. They labeled learned behaviors as ‘operants’ – that which is created and determined by its consequences. Then they failed to make the case that there was a significant difference between operant and non-operant (Innate/reflexive) behavior. This is a shallow understanding. It’s not one-or-the other. It’s invariably a combination of the two. That reveals their odd bias. There are many behaviors that are solely reflexive but none that are entirely operant. The Foundation of all behavior is reflexive associations. Those reflexes often morph into complex learned behaviors. Your brain doesn’t notice the difference, but behaviorists focus on only one.
The Real Foundation Ignored: Associative learning
In 1924, Ivan Pavlov published his great work, Conditional Reflexes. He examined how animals make associations between obviously related, obviously unrelated events and events without connected consequences. Without that ability, no sophisticated knowledge is possible. To give a detailed example of how this makes a difference, consider this seemingly nonsensical question.
How does your body know that you have a nose? You can’t really see it. It can’t smell itself. How do you know you have a nose? The answer lies in a specific ability. You can associate sensations with internal and external events. This starts early – as an infant. When a child pulls a blanket over its back to keep warm, the association is made automatically. This is a primitive thing. It’s the same process that teaches an infant what is edible vs. inedible. You know you have a nose because of the integration of various innate sensory reflexes. You touch your nose with your hand, feel around a bit, and know all about it. Then a connection of sensations between your lungs and your nostrils give you another load of ‘data’. Soon, you know you have a nose based on internal reflexes that connect you to the tangible world.
This is what makes the argument of ‘nature vs. nurture’ an absurd waste of time. It is either all nature or nature and nurture – your innate physical and behavioral qualities rubbing up against the environment. Generally, we can call that Associative/Pavlovian learning, respondent or ‘Classical Conditioning’ (It should be called ‘foundational learning’ as it is the foundation for all other learning.)
Associative learning is the prerequisite to what is called ‘operant’ behavior. That is defined as behaviors that are created and maintained by their consequences. However, without associative learning the animal can’t know which behavior is connected to what consequences. If the rat cannot connect that initial accidental pressing of the lever to the click-click of the feeder mechanism, there will be no operant behavior. Guess what topic behavior analysts don’t seriously study? You guessed it. I have spoken to several of Skinner’s early graduate students and his last. None of them were required to study Pavlov’s work. It shows. That is because Pavlov was firmly rooted in the natural world and they are not. For instance…
“It is pretty evident that under natural conditions the normal animal must respond not only to stimuli which themselves bring immediate waves of sound, light and the like – which in themselves only signal the approach of these stimuli; though it is not the sight and sound of the beast of prey which is in itself harmful to the smaller animal, but its teeth and claws.” I. Pavlov (1924)
That is the context for behavior. We have senses that give us information about the environment around us and inside our bodies. We make connections between events such as stars and mythological creatures. We connect the smell of cigar smoke to Dodger stadium in the 1960s. Behavior analysts call that ‘superstitious behavior’ because it is not actually connected to any ‘rational’ consequence. The problem is that only some associations are the result of thinking about it. Much of our behavior is not rational – but it is perfectly natural and normal. Consider the definition: Rational: “based on or in accordance with reason or logic”
Now consider real scientists doing likewise. Imagine physicists who deny a simple principle like terminal velocity. The speed of an object falling is not dependent on the weight, but by the power of the earth’s pull and the density of the air. Heavier objects fall at the same acceleration and speed other than their shape that meets air resistance. A closed parachute falls at the same rate as one that doesn’t deploy. The only difference is the way the object is impeded by air resistance – another effect of gravity that holds dense air molecules to the Earth’s surface. What if the physicists opposed things that defy gravity? You can have no airplanes because they can fall to the ground. No elevators because they can fall to the ground. No two-story buildings because they can collapse. That would represent the antithesis of science and engineering. Science is supposed to reveal nature, not dictate how humans should relate to that revelation. Engineering is the application of valid scientific principles to facilitate a better world. Without science as its base, engineering would be a path to destruction. Many supposedly rational people do not use their natural abilities to connect the dots – including behavioral scientists.
The Grand Plan: Science perverted by ideology
Behaviorists created the term ‘operant’ behavior. Though sketchy, it has a definite meaning. However, they didn’t use that word to describe the real world. It simply means behaviors that are created by their environment. OK. On closer examination we see that of all the things we do, operant behaviors are in the minority. Behaviorists decided to pick a sliver of a sliver and claim it was the entire world. Now that they had the concept of ‘operants’ they had to describe the consequences that would change the ‘rate of response’ of a rat or a pigeon doing a single thing. Now it gets confusing. According to the Skinnerians, there are two types of consequences and two types of each. Reinforcement strengthens behavior while punishment causes it to be suppressed. But wait, there’s more. Remember, they wanted to use numbers to create borrowed credibility from mathematics – a real science.
So, they injected the terms positive and negative to imitate mathematics. Positive means added and negative means subtractive. Behaviorists used those meanings as modifiers for what they called reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement described behaviors that increased in rate of response after something was added. Negative reinforcement described behaviors generated by attempting to escape something. Likewise, punishment is ‘positive punishment’ if something is added that causes a behavior to decline. Negative punishment describes a behavior declining because something was subtracted. Got that? No, probably not. It’s a bizarre and eccentric set of words describing arbitrary processes. It is anything but intuitive.
However, there is a problem. Who says these influences are discrete to a single event? Life is a flow. The reinforcement/punishment angle implies that there are pigeon holes that contain experiences. It also implies that the brain has emojis like smiley-face and dog turd. Each pigeon hole has an emoji connected to it. How silly. One event might have multiple consequences and potential consequences stored within memory. I like Mexican food, but the chile rellenos at a particular Mexican restaurant suck. So I get carnitas if I go there. No pigeon holes. It’s a menu.
The Dreaded Stimulus: Ubiquitous Buzz-word
Added to this mix is the universal use of the word stimulus. The word comes from the Greek, meaning ‘to goad or prod’ – like banging on a donkey’s butt to force him up a mountain on the island of Santorini. There is a better word for this. Impetus. From the Cambridge Dictionary…
Impetus: something that encourages a particular activity or makes that activity more energetic or effective.
However, they didn’t use the better word. One wonders how to describe a treat as a ‘goad or prod’, yet they do. In the end, the word ‘stimulus’ translates as a catch-all word that means ‘thingy’.
I’ll show you how it works. If you poke a cactus it will cause pain. That stops you from poking cactus in the future. That is a ‘positive punishment’ procedure. Why ‘positive’? Because the pain was added to the event.
Positive Reinforcement: If you give a dog a treat for sitting and that behavior is more likely in the future, that is a positive reinforcement procedure. The added thingy/stimulus (the food) made sitting more likely.
Negative Punishment: If your local Walgreens shuts down because of constant vandalism and theft, you will stop going there. That is ‘negative punishment’ because a thingy/stimulus (toothpaste, prescriptions and photo processing) was subtracted.
Negative Reinforcement: I slap a cane stick on the ass of a donkey to goad it up to the top of the mountain at Santorini. Wait a minute. The slapping was ‘added’ just like the pain of the cactus needle, but it increased the behavior. How does that work? Oh, that’s right. The animal is attempting to avoid the slap on the butt and that increases the likelihood that the donkey will go forward when slapped. A better example is putting a thumb tack on the teacher’s chair. She sits on it, yells and leaps to her feet. And there the behaviorist loses the battle for want of a full context.
No, it doesn’t increase the likelihood that she will leap up after sitting on a tack. That is a built-in reflex. Does she leap up faster, next time? Is she more likely to leap up? Nope. Her reaction to the painful thumbtack is like pulling the finger back from the cactus needle. Any increase in strength, intensity or likelihood requires additional analogous events to prove that any kind of ‘reinforcement’ took place. That is because the teacher is autonomous. The teacher does not live in a box that severely limits choices. She can do many things that neutralize the chance of a tack on her chair. If any behaviors are strengthened, they would be unobservable. Things like specific cautions. Perhaps she will engage in retribution for the culprits. She may hook up a video camera and know exactly who did the deed. That way the punishment will be contingent – for the actual perpetrators.
The jackass is no different. If anything, the slap on its ass habituates the donkey to the pain of the slap and may require more and harder slaps in the future. The initial reaction does not waver in favor of anything being ‘reinforced’, no matter what you mean by that word.
The Humpty Dumpty Rule:
The lack of specificity in their language is a huge problem with behavior analysis. At its most basic it uses cumbersome terms that do not really describe what happens. My friend Dr. Peter Killeen once told me that reinforcement is an intent, a process and a result. That is problematic. It is like Humpty Dumpty speaking with Alice.
“On her adventures, Alice met Humpty Dumpty on his wall, and he was talking nonsense, or what seemed to her to be nonsense or at best, unintelligible. He used words that had entirely different meanings to Alice.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that's all.’”
Hidden in that exchange are several important concepts. First, the speaker controls the meaning. Second, the hearer may not object to the meaning, no matter how cockeyed and eccentric. Up may mean down. Bad may mean laudable – as in Michael Jackson’s album of the same name. Did anyone think that skinny kid was ‘bad’? Nope. He’s the kid hiding in his bed in Beat It. \
\Third, the ultimate intent of this process is revealed. As with all jargon, the goal is to be able to be master of the conversation. Reinforcement means any number of variously unspecified things based on the intent of the speaker. It is a direct rejection of Aristotle’s rules of identity – the foundation of all science. It also makes it impossible for a layman to check on the work of the academic. As with Humpty Dumpty, the questioner is disparaged as ignorant.
Here's how it works: …or doesn’t.
This we know: poke a cactus and you will refrain from poking cactus in the future. Pluck a ripe strawberry and you will be more likely to pluck red strawberries in the future. This is a terribly myopic view of behavior. Why call it myopic? Because it leaves out a great deal of the influences that control behavior. It would be like describing a car by only looking at acceleration and deceleration with no regard to things like steering. However, it gets worse.
Behavioral scientists decided that they liked one part of their minimalist equation – positive reinforcement – and opposed the flip side of the coin – punishment. When they say reinforcement they don’t mean negative reinforcement. When they say punishment, they don’t mean negative punishment. Why add the four types of behavioral effects if you only mean two of them and oppose one of the two? One wonders why a scientist would exclude study and use of half of the spectrum of behavioral influences. [2]This comes from an ideology called normative hedonism. That is a philosophy that likes pleasant things, regardless of outcome and dislikes unpleasant things – again, regardless of outcome.
So, if one follows a trail of treats, like Hansel and Gretl, but goes over a cliff, no problem. If a savior punches you in the nose to prevent you from going over the cliff, that is horrible. The key to this notion is that it’s not about results, it’s about process. In essence it is a utopian fantasy. Utopians in all forms obsess over process. What comes of it is invariably tragic – but they don’t care about that. They do not acknowledge any responsibility for the results of their ideas.
Prime-Time Fail:
NBC had a short-lived documentary (sort of) series called “My kid would never do that”. The set up was having parents tell them what their kid would do or not do – and then proving it. One of the episodes was on gun safety. It’s a real problem…for children 2-4 years and from ten to 12 years. So, a PhD behaviorist crafted a safety program – of kids 8-10. The most ‘at risk’ kids weren’t included. Needless to say, it didn’t work. The children had a class where they learned three things to do if they saw a gun. See a gun, don’t touch it, report the location to an adult.
The kids in the video did exactly that – and after they met the third criterion, they went back and started playing with the gun. They tried to find some ketchup to make it look like one of them had been shot. Grand work, Herr Doctor. The man confirmed that his methodology was only about 50/50 in terms of effectiveness. So, only half the kids get shot. What a wonderful goal. In fairness, the program was done perfectly by the standards of behavior analysis. It just didn’t work – but it had no punishment component, so it was automatically good.
So what?
Now I will get to the point. The only credentials that mean anything are your success or failure in controlling the behavior of people and animals. Being a rat wrangler in a science lab is meaningless. Even the vaunted data that comes from that is meaningless. Doubt me? I’ll spell it out.
Reinforcement: OK, you reinforced a behavior. That word is everywhere and is a humpty-dumpty term used as a catchall. Like saying ‘heaven’. What kind of heaven? Mark Twain remarked that to understand heaven, imagine a place where not one person in 1,000 could play the harp while living and yet every resident of Heaven is banging away on one. Oh, the horrors!
So, what exactly did you reinforce? Was it the accuracy of which strings the novice harp players plucked? Was it how hard they plucked? Was it how fast they plucked strings? It is illogical to use the same word to describe multiple criteria of even a simple thing like a plectrum instrument. That implies that all behaviors are one-dimensional. The alternative is that it means that all behaviors are of equal importance to survival. Neither of those statements are even close to truthful.
I hope you realize how stupid that is. It’s not a straw-man argument. It is the argument. Must we view the world through the spectrum of abject failures? One might say, ‘losers’. They study minutia and claim it represents the whole world. Near the end of his life, B.F. Skinner gave a speech in Japan still ranting, albeit feebly, for a ‘coercion-free society’. This, from a man who never ran a convenience store, small town or validated any of the things he professed. Yes, if you let Skinner control utopia, you’ll be fine. Noisy neighbors? Give them money to be quiet. Brawling bikers? Give them beer if they are peaceful. Rapists? Give them ‘cognitive’ counseling. Talk-talk makes nice-nice. But you may never coerce behavior of any kind. Traffic tickets? Nope. Jail time? Nope. Spanking a child for threatening someone with a knife? Nope. Just ‘reinforce’ things and all will be good. To their kind, random acts of kindness are superior to intelligent acts of reinforcement and punishment for civil behavior.
The Disconnect:
Real science is based on objective observations of the real world. If a particular endeavor does not do that, it’s not science. The early behaviorists were focused on numbers that have almost no relationship with real life. The closest thing you can get is ‘piece work’ – the standard of 19th Century hand labor. Each widget you made brought you a small wage. The faster you worked, the more you made. These days we see that in 3rd World sweat shops. If you make $.03 to put shoelaces in a shoe, your wage is dependent on how many you do. Here’s the problem. There is almost nothing in normal life that works that way. It is an image of another time and place that has little to do with the important aspects of life. Did your grandmother count how many times you kissed her cheek? If a loved one is in intensive care, is there a ‘rate of response’ that measures your behavior? Do we count how often the nurses take their temperature? What nonsense.
I must admit that even writing about this is infuriating. Our culture worships science for good reasons. In the case of psychology and behavior, they worship voodoo-science that harms anyone it touches. Doubt me? Here’s a quote from a certified behavior analyst. She works in a clinical setting. I met her at an international behavior conference I Toronto, Canada. My topic was “Punish or Perish”.
”Here in my current position, I often struggle with years and years of ‘reinforcement’ procedures that still have my students breaking their own noses and requiring 2-person holds – often on a daily basis, and an absolute resistance to even discussing the possibility of using a punishment procedure.”
This points to a major hypocrisy within ‘behavioral therapy’. The patient is prevented from self-injury, not with a behavioral solution, but by manhandling. The more the patient resists, the more forceful the restraint. A two-person hold sounds mundane but it is often a brutal procedure. The victim/patient can only assume they are being violently assaulted – because they are. Imagine that solution as the ‘consequence’ of breaking your own nose? What if a punishment procedure could stop the nose breaking? The tyrants who control this nose-breaker say, ‘no-way’. That condemns the patient to a lifetime of broken noses. It also condemns the therapists to standing by and watching routine violence. Think about that again. Routine violence.
However, the violence and injuries are indeed consequences, but have no influence on the behavior. It is not therapeutic. It is torture, forever and ever. It defies the ethical rules of the American Psychological Association. That is the code of ethics adopted by behavior analysts. It requires that a patient is due treatment known to be effective. Ah, but there is a catch. The evidence must follow the forms of examination and analysis done by people within that social group. If knowledge comes from outside that group, it can be ignored.
Remember, we have a patient that regularly offers violence toward himself and others. A solution is not to be found from behavioral science – or is it? What if the literature has been conveniently been forgotten? What if clinics that do research in the approved fashion have been punished for offering punishment as a solution.
Left or Right: You make the call.
The chart above signifies something. First, you have to know that this is a standard celeration chart. The horizontal lines increase logarithmically. Meaning from the baseline to the first line is 10. From the first line to the second line is 100. Next is 1,000 and the final one is 10,000. The individual human in this study is doing an undesired behavior, such as self-injury, up to 100 times a day. More than 5 per hour. The left side of the chart shows the use of positive methods to control the behavior. (That is the meaning of “positive programming” in this example.) The chart below shows the full cumulative record after a change in treatment. It shows a dramatic drop in the behavior. What was the change? The introduction of contingent punishment in the form of skin-shock. Meaning if you do X (pound your eyes) you will be shocked. If you do not do X you will not be shocked.
So, according to the full chart (and common observation) the decades old myth that positive reinforcement can solve all problems is bunk. There is at least one behavior that does not respond to advanced, scientific methods. That myth is purely invented, as the ‘six foot’ distancing rule during Covid was invented. Likewise, the myth that punishment doesn’t work is obviously false. Ask the lowly cactus if that behavioral effect works.
An intelligent person would conclude that if a behavior has to be stopped, the procedure depicted on the left would be a bad choice. The chart on the right has taken a rate of up to 100 responses per day and dropped it to less than 1 and then to zero.( If you are a positive reinforcement advocate you would likely prefer that I not put this chart in context. Too bad. My master is veritas – truth for truth’s sake…and this is the truth.) How about self-injurious behavior? Like a dog that fights violently to escape any confinement, thereby hurting itself? That is a common problem. It’s called separation anxiety. A similar problem can occur because of noise phobias. The animal panics and goes through sheet-rock, plumbing fixtures and rips itself up pretty bad in the process.
It the APA requires evidence created from scholarly texts and peer-reviewed literature, it’s there.
“Punishment can reduce a behavior’s frequency below its operant level to a zero level of occurrence. If such complete response suppression is produced, it is clear that the behavior will not recover unless a special effort is made to reestablish it.” Dr. Ron Van Houten: The Effects of Punishment on Human Behavior, Axelrod and Apsche, Academic Press, 1983, Chpt 2, pg 32
Note the date, 1983. Since the mid-1980’s research into punishment has ironically been punished. If you disagree with me, you must produce evidence that the topic has been studied to this day. You must also disagree with A. Charles Catania, an icon in the field of behavior analysis. I will give you his words, later.
Back to the chart:
Now I would ask a few simple questions. If you needed to stop someone from doing a self-injurious behavior beyond their control, why would someone pick the chart on the left? Would it be kind or ethical to block a treatment that stopped the behavior? Would it be evil to attack a practitioner who used a method that caused the reduction in the dangerous behavior? Is skin shock in the same league as a face ripped by nails as the dog goes through the sheet rock at the back of a toilet, trying to escape? Is skin shock as invasive as a tooth broken off in wild panic trying to get through galvanized steel plumbing pipes? I have no answers for you other than to say that there are many behaviorists, modern trainers and “humane advocates” who prefer the chart on the left and attack any discussion or use of tools that would lead to the chart on the right. That being said, which side are you on? Behavioral scientists have already answered. None of them defended the Judge Rottenberg Center – the facility that generated our chart. When public outrage swamped their facility, the ‘scientists’ did not uphold science. They caved, many happily.
The Upshot:
OK. We have people who claim to respect science showing cowardice in the face of unscientific social influences. That was a form of punishment. You will not find anyone within behavioral science who now champions truly effective treatment. Their fear of public outrage has caused them to duck for cover. That has led to a vast social movement to remove any form of coercion from society – except their own. The irony is that behavioral scientists are the ones who fostered this concept starting in the 1940’s.
This is a quote that was on the website of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Internation in about 2005. It was in the FAQ section.
“Stronger forms of physical punishment, such as brief and mild electric shock, are seldom used and then only as a last resort with severe behavior disorders that have not responded to gentler procedures.”
This may seem like an innocuous statement. Now plug it into our favorite nose-breaker. The key is in the phrases, ‘severe behavior disorders’, ‘last resort’ and ‘not responded to gentler procedures’. Why is punishment inappropriate for any anti-social or dangerous behavior? What constitutes a serious behavior problem? Why are we to prefer gentler methods over ‘highly effective’ methods? If one knows how to stop antisocial and dangerous behaviors, why must we try gentler methods first? Do these scientists not know which behaviors have never responded to gentler methods? That leads to our next anti-scientific conclusion.
A rational person would examine the nature of behavioral effects. By definition, ‘positive reinforcement’ influences behavior by increasing it using pleasant, gentle methods. ‘Negative reinforcement ’ increases behavior via aversion. Both are forms of reinforcement but one is naughty and one is nice. We are to believe that there is a general benefit to ‘nice’ and some down-side to ‘naughty’…without any comparison to allow a logical analysis. That is plainly a value judgment without a rational base for analysis. That requires a comparison and further classifications. Is ‘nice’ going to fix our nose-breaker’s problem? Has anyone stopped breaking their nose via positive ‘gentler’ methods? If not, why would anyone consider ‘gentler’ methods when effectively stopping the behavior is the critical need?
Now we get to the overarching problem. Behavior analysts do not study aversive control. They have effectively barred any logical study into the behavioral effect. I just mentioned A. Charles Catania. He was invited to write an article for the 50th anniversary of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) in 2007.
“Research on human behavior therefore does not seem threatened, but a different topic seems to be in jeopardy. The analysis of aversive control has almost vanished from JEAB. The sole exception in Volume 87 is an article on aversive control with humans, on the effectiveness of restraint as a punisher of stereotyped behavior in autism (Doughty, Anderson, Doughty, Williams, & Saunders, 2007). Has the conduct and publication of research on punishment and escape and avoidance and conditioned suppression and related phenomena been punished?
Have we learned enough about aversive-control phenomena in the past half-century that we do not need to study them any more? How much do we know about conditioned punishers as they may operate in extended chains and other complex schedules (e.g., Silverman, 1971), and can we afford the assumption that differences between reinforcement and punishment are essentially matters of changes in sign? In a world so filled with aversive events that enter into various contingencies with behavior (Perone, 2003), can we entertain any extensions of our applications without continuing or expanding our experimental analyses of these phenomena?
I point you to a major statement.
“Has the conduct and publication of research on punishment and escape and avoidance and conditioned suppression and related phenomena been punished?
This conclusion comes from someone fully aware of the changes within behavioral science. Not the science, the output of people claiming to be scientists. For over 80 years they have peed in the lemonade and called it refreshing. Don’t trust them. They are not scientists, they are ideologues. If someone with academic credentials claims expertise in the discussion of punishment, they are lying to you. There are no courses or credentials in all of academia that would qualify someone to speak as an authority. That means they have no credentials to actually apply punishment.
Now, here’s a grand irony. Dr. Murray Sidman in his book, Coercion and Its Fallout, offered create opposition to any use of punishment. He wrote this in 1984. It is as true today as it was when he wrote it.
“But it is not correct for behavior analysts to claim exemption from public regulations on the grounds that their training qualifies them to use punishment and other forms of coercion. Such a claim is incorrect because competence in the application of punishment is not the mark of a qualified behavior analyst. I know of no training program or degree, whether in psychology, psychiatry, education of behavior analysis that qualifies its recipient to use punishment.”
The irony is that though he is known for performing years of nasty and cruel experimentation on living animals, he was never qualified to do those things…
Mo’ later, Amigos.
[1] The Sargasso Sea is a place where four major ocean currents meet. It is relatively static and hosts giant beds of sea weed. A sailing ship becalmed in the Sargasso Sea isn’t going anywhere, which led to myths of a grave yard of lost ships.
[2] It’s actually less than half. Behaviorists do not acknowledge instinctive behavior.
Love this Gary Wilkes 💙