Methods for Changing Behaviors - Psychological Self-Help

More documents

Recommendations

Info

There is no doubt that threats work in many situations: we drive at 65 mph, we pay more taxes than we would without penalties for cheating, students study more when threatened with low grades, we are intimidated by pushy, aggressive people, etc. Sometimes we rebel against threats, or we disregard threats because we are so emotional (for example in murder cases). But, many "rules" and fines or mildly critical reminders influence our behavior easily and very effectively (Miller, 1980). Research with alcoholism and homosexuality has had limited success with avoidance and escape training (Bellack and Hersen, 1977). It is set up so that drinking or unwanted sexual behaviors lead to nausea or electric shock. The nausea and shock can be avoided by staying sober and avoiding certain sexual thoughts or actions. The drop-out-of-therapy rate is high with these problems using threats of physical punishment, so using similar self-help methods are dubious in these cases too. However, the threat of mild self-administered shock associated with taking out a cigarette has been fairly effective. The techniques for avoiding an unpleasant situation, e.g. change of environment or being assertive, have a good rate of success. The efficacy of creating your own stressful situation and then lowering the stress by being "good" is not well researched, although it is a common procedure in diet, exercise, and study programs. We humans are remarkably adept at disregarding the harmful long range consequences of over-eating, taking it easy, and putting off studying. Stressful self-confrontation may be the best solution to getting ourselves going. These negative reinforcement methods can be fairly simple, especially getting out of bad situations and making up threatening rules. But, it is not easy to recognize the payoffs for unwanted behaviors (see method #9) and change those situations. Creating your own stress may also be hard and should be done with caution. I suspect that people who are already prone to be overly critical of themselves are attracted to self-criticism as a self-help method (which contributes to their problem, not to the solution). There may be some risks associated with these methods: if you build the stress (to be avoided in order to be reinforced), you may then avoid the threatening situation altogether when it is to your advantage to stick it out. For example, if you make studying much more important (by emphasizing the long-range consequences), the additional stress may result in your partying and drinking more (to forget the future), instead of studying more. So be sure only desired behavior is being strengthened by the avoidance of unpleasantness. Furthermore, creating more stress might be psychologically and physiologically unhealthy. Additional readings 1140
Self-punishment Miller, L. K. (1980). Principles of everyday behavior analysis (2nd ed.), Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Punishment is administering something hurtful immediately following an unwanted behavior so it will stop. We all understand how it works...and it works effectively if the punishment is immediate, severe enough and administered consistently. Aversive control of others permeates our culture: parents yell at and spank children, society fines and imprisons law-breakers, schools give low grades and fail students, employers threaten to fire workers, religions damn us for sinning, governments go to war to kill others. Yet, it is a procedure so fraught with difficulties and unpredictable consequences that many people, including psychologists, think punishment should not be used with others at all. Punishment may arouse fear and anger; it doesn't teach any improved behavior and it may only suppress some behavior while the punisher is watching. However, punishment can stop certain behaviors. Even watching someone else be punished can have a powerful impact on our behavior in the same situation for a long time. The questions are: can selfpunishment have a powerful influence on our own behavior? Does selfadministered punishment have bad consequences too? Surely not the same feelings of fear and unfairness as when someone else is punishing us. Unfortunately, science doesn't know yet what goes on in our head in terms of attributions, self-instructions, and self-esteem when we self-punish? Nor do we know the emotional or behavioral consequences of self-punishment. Just as punishment of others is a common, "natural" response to a hurt or insult, self-criticism and self-directed anger is a common response to failure in some people. Just as psychologists don't know, yet, the consequences of venting our anger caused by others, we don't know if venting anger against ourselves is helpful or not. Clearly, some great athletes and scholars are highly self-critical if they make a mistake, but we don't know if that contributed to their greatness or detracted from it. Prolonged self-hatred is extremely harmful, but what about temporary and specific self-criticism? Does self-censure have the same effects on our behavior as self-punishment? We don't know but we know many people are self-critical (in the extreme they become depressed). For now, each of us has to find out for ourselves when self-hurt--physical and emotional--is harmful and when is it helpful? (Actually, we probably adopt or reject this technique early in childhood sans scientific data.) Purposes: Please note that this method deals only with self - punishment. 1141
Page 1 and 2:
Chapter 11: Methods for Changing Be
Page 3 and 4:
ut the "meat" of this chapter is in
Page 5 and 6:
habits. The stimulus for avoidance
Page 7 and 8:
student to go to the library; getti
Page 9 and 10:
Time involved Only a few minutes wi
Page 11 and 12:
Purposes · To consider periodicall
Page 13 and 14:
situations. Examples: the same soci
Page 15 and 16:
your schedule; make a public pledge
Page 17 and 18:
Steps · To decrease a behavior, ge
Page 19 and 20:
Even if it is done gradually, it is
Page 21 and 22:
When we have an overpowering bad ha
Page 23 and 24: weeks. In general, studies of relap
Page 25 and 26: (because hard work would have been
Page 27 and 28: advanced tasks (see chapter 4). Oth
Page 29 and 30: It is not easy to guess the unmet n
Page 31 and 32: more accurately aware if we objecti
Page 33 and 34: See chapter 2, step 2. STEP THREE:
Page 35 and 36: Steps · To understand what in the
Page 37 and 38: Chapter 4 describes operant, classi
Page 39 and 40: In order to develop a new behavior,
Page 41 and 42: Don't expect instant results. Keep
Page 43 and 44: the bars, but not all of them. It's
Page 45 and 46: If you are a compulsive house clean
Page 47 and 48: Challenge defeatist attitudes; let
Page 49 and 50: may do the trick. (5) Maybe you can
Page 51 and 52: Time involved Little time is requir
Page 53 and 54: Although researchers need to differ
Page 55 and 56: Let's take studying as an example.
Page 57 and 58: have to offer to encourage the desi
Page 59 and 60: Thus, to arrange successful reinfor
Page 61 and 62: Steps · To strengthen the tendency
Page 63 and 64: 4. Fun activities alone--small: sme
Page 65 and 66: ___________________________________
Page 67 and 68: improving your social interaction,
Page 69 and 70: controlled and based on short-term
Page 71 and 72: einforcement: the threat of further
Page 73: 3. Learn skills and methods of redu
Page 77 and 78: "correction" (must make up for the
Page 79 and 80: easons, sometimes the punishment is
Page 81 and 82: About 2000 years ago, Epictitus tau
Page 83 and 84: STEP THREE: Arrange to use the meth
Page 85 and 86: Steps STEP ONE: Specifically descri
show all

Methods for Changing Behaviors - Psychological Self-Help

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?