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Achieving
the Positive Life Through Negative Reinforcement
Richard W. Malott1
Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University
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Abstract
Based on the three-contingency model of performance management, I
make the following argument: (1) Often, we fail to behave as we should
because the natural contingencies supporting appropriate behavior
are ineffective; the natural contingencies involve outcomes for each
individual response that are either too small, though of cumulative
significance, or outcomes that are too improbable. The delay of the
outcome is essentially irrelevant. The psychodynamic model of the
cognitive motivational theorists provides a poor explanation for why
we fail to behave as we should. (2) The performance-management contingencies
in organizational behavior management (OBM) must usually involve deadline-induced
aversive control, even when they are based on powerful reinforcers.
Furthermore, such performance management succeeds only to the extent
that that the person behavioral history, “Jewish mother,”
has inculcated an appropriate value system. Wiegand and Geller’s
critique of the necessity of the use of aversive control fails to
take into account the necessity of deadlines and the difference between
instrumental and hedonic reinforcers; furthermore, it greatly over
values the power of intrinsic reinforcement contingencies in OBM.
Introduction
I seem to be defining much of my recent career in terms of a dialog
with Scott Geller and his colleagues, as this is my fourth article
in that dialog (Malott, 2001, 2002-d, 2002-e). The dialog addresses
two issues—the role of cognitive psychology in behaviorally
based performance management and the role of aversive control in that
performance management. The context has been behavior-based safety
interventions, more generally, organizational behavior management,
and now even more generally performance management of normal, verbal
adults.
In this article, I will first review the three-contingency model of
performance management and its implications for the necessity of subtle
aversive control in even the most positive of performance-management
contingencies. Then I will address Wiegand and Geller’s criticism
of this approach. And finally I will comment on the achievement-motivation
and self-worth theories those authors advocate.
The
Three-contingency Model of Performance Management
and the Necessity of Aversive Control
The three-contingency model of performance management deals with
the management of the behavior of verbal human beings, typically normal
adults (Malott, 1992, 1993 October; Malott, Malott, & Shimamune,
1993; Malott, Shimamune, & Malott, 1993; Malott & Suarez-Trojan,
2004).
The
Ineffective Natural Contingency
The first of the three contingencies is the ineffective natural contingency,
the contingency we wish controlled behavior but fails to do so.
Small but Cumulatively
Significant Outcomes
The most common reason such contingencies fail to control is that
the size of the outcome of any single instance of the behavior of
interest is too small to support or suppress that behavior, though
the cumulative outcome of many such instances is significant.
For example, one instance of routine maintenance of a machine will
have little effect, but the cumulative effect of regular maintenance
over a period of time might greatly reduce machine failure, increase
machine safety, and extend the life of the machine. Because one single
instance of regular maintenance has only a trivial effect, people
often fail to maintain equipment reliably. In other words the outcome
of any single instance of machine maintenance is too small to support
that behavior, though the cumulative outcome of many such instances
is significant. Therefore, implicit, if not explicit, performance
management is needed to insure reliable machine maintenance. (An example
of implicit performance management would be, I will be very disappointed
in you, if you turn out not to responsible enough to take care of
your equipment; whereas an example of explicit performance management
would be, You will lose your weekly proactivity bonus, if don’t
maintain your equipment.)
Similarly, one instance of working in an ergonomically incorrect manner
will have little effect, but the cumulative effect of poor work ergonomics
over a period of time can be crippling. In other words the outcome
of any single instance of ergonomically incorrect work is too small
to suppress that behavior, though the cumulative outcome of many such
instances is significant. Therefore, implicit, if not explicit, performance
management is needed to insure a reliable, ergonomically correct work
style.
Of course, when the natural outcome of any one instance of behavior
is significant, rules describing the natural contingency will effectively
control that behavior, even if that significant, natural outcome is
delayed. For example, you will always bring your laptop computer in
from the sun deck at the end of the day, when a rain storm is due
in a few hours.
Improbable
but Significant Outcomes
The other reason some natural contingencies are ineffective is that
the probability of the outcome of any instance of the behavior of
interest is too small to reinforce or punish that behavior, though
the size of the outcome is significant when it does occur. This sort
of ineffective natural contingency is most common in areas of safety.
For example, one instance of putting on safety equipment, such as
a hard hat will probably have no beneficial effect, because the probability
is very low that it would be needed. In other words, the probability
of benefiting from any one instance of putting on the hard hat is
too small to support that behavior, though the benefit may be life
saving when the need for the hard hat arises. Therefore, implicit,
if not explicit, performance management is needed to insure reliable
use of safety equipment, even though failing to use the safety equipment
might result in serious injury.
And one instance of grabbing a misplaced part from the closing jaws
of a press might have a low probability of injury. In other words,
the probability of harm resulting from any one instance of grabbing
a misplaced part is too small to suppress that behavior, though the
harm may be tragic when it does occur. Therefore implicit, if not
explicit, performance management might be needed to reliably prevent
such risky behavior, even though that behavior could result in serious
injury.
Of course,, when the probability of injury is high, rules describing
the natural contingency will effectively control using safety equipment,
for example, buckling up and putting on a helmet before driving in
an auto race.
The
Irrelevance of the Delay of the Outcome
There is considerable confusion in behavior analysis, as well as
in the general public concerning the relevance of the delay of the
outcome. Part of the behavior-analytic confusion may come from a simplistic
extrapolation from the rat in the Skinner box to the verbal human
being in everyday life. The delay is crucial for reinforcement and
punishment, both for the rat and for the person; there is little evidence,
for either species, that reinforcement or punishment will occur if
the outcome is delayed by more than 60 seconds. But, in all of the
examples we just considered, if the outcome were both sizeable and
probable, and if the person knew the rule describing the contingency
involving that outcome, that rule would most certainly control the
person’s behavior, regardless of the delay.
Suppose the person knows that if he fails to oil the press today,
or if he fails to put on his hard hat today, or if his next move is
un-ergonomic, or if he grabs that one misplaced part, then a million
dollar machine will be destroyed, or he will be permanently injured;
however, further suppose that this disastrous outcome will not occur
until exactly one year from now. All but the most bizarre of accident-ophiles
who would behave safely. Rules control our behavior when the outcome
is sizeable and probable, regardless of the delay. As suggested previously,
the reason rules describing some contingencies are ineffective is
that the outcomes of those contingencies are too small or too improbable,
not because they are too delayed.
The
Performance-management Contingency
An Ineffective,
Traditional Approach to Performance Management
A traditional but misguided approach to performance management is
the informational/motivational approach. This intervention consists
of describing the natural contingency to the person, with great emphasis
on the seriousness of the consequence, like showing pictures of auto-crash
victims who failed to put on their seat belts or pictures of lungs
whose owners had smoked cigarettes for 40 years. Such techniques involve
attempts to increase the apparent aversiveness of the outcomes. But,
usually they will have little more than a momentary effect, if the
natural contingency involves either an improbable or a small outcome
for each individual response though the outcomes might be cumulatively
significant. And if the outcome is both probable and sizeable, the
intervention may often be unnecessary, because the person already
knows the rule, and that rule already controls the person’s
behavior.
An Effective
Contingency-Management Approach to Performance Management
Instead of using the traditional, informational/motivational approach,
the performance manager must supplement the ineffective natural contingency
with an effective performance-management contingency. Most behavior-analytically
based performance-management contingencies involve an added reinforcer,
an incentive. For example, consider the use of an incentive intervention
to improve job performance in a manufacturing plant (Jessup &
Stahelski; 1999):
The ineffective natural contingency was that, each instance of carefully
baking a carbon anode would prevent only an infinitesimal increase
in rejects and would prevent only an infinitesimal decrease in company
productivity, though many instance of careful baking would prevent
significantly fewer rejects and prevent significantly less decrease
in productivity (see the first contingency in Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Three-Contingency
Model of Performance Management
Jessup and Stahelski used a group performance-management contingency
for the 15 employees involved in baking the anodes: If the average
rejection rate was less than 60 per week for 13 consecutive weeks,
the employees would and did receive dinner for the entire group (see
the second contingency in Figure 1).
The result was that the workers decreased the rejection rate of baked
carbon anodes from 142 to 59 per week for a cost savings between $11,200
and $16,900 per week.
The Relevance
of the Delay of the Outcome: Reinforcement vs. Analogs to Reinforcement
Now, at first glance, this might seem like reinforcement: Working
carefully for 13 weeks would be reinforced by the group dinner. However,
this is not reinforcement. The delay between the last careful anode-baking
response and the delivery of the presumed reinforcer, the group dinner,
was certainly greater than 60 sec; therefore, the group dinner could
not have reinforced that response. And, of course, the dinner could
not have reinforced careful anode-baking 13 weeks earlier. Nor is
it reasonable to invoke a 13-week response chain, with its many weekend
and bed-time interruptions.
Note that it is important to distinguish between the reinforcer and reinforcement: The reinforcer is the stimulus,
event, or condition that increases the frequency of a response class
it immediately follows; presumably the reinforcer is the group dinner.
But reinforcement is the procedure and process of increasing
the frequency of that response class because a reinforcer immediately
followed a member of that response class. And a reinforcement contingency,
is the contingent presentation of a reinforcer within 60 seconds of
the causal response; the reinforcement contingency is responsible
for the reinforcement process.
Of course, the group dinner is probably a reinforcer. And, the rule
describing that reinforcer’s delayed, contingent presentation
did increase the frequency of the relevant response class (careful
anode baking). But the delayed careful-anode-baking => group-dinner contingency is not a reinforcement contingency. Superficially, it
looks like a reinforcement contingency; and superficially, it acts
like a reinforcement contingency; but, because of the delay, it is
not a reinforcement contingency. Instead, it might be an analog to
a reinforcement contingency. It might be analogous rather than homologous
to reinforcement, because, as I will later suggest, the underlying
processes for the analog contingency differ from the underlying processes
for the reinforcement contingency.
The Relevance
of Deadlines: Analogs to Reinforcement vs. Analogs to Avoidance
But, the real-world is even more complex than we have thus far considered.
In the real world, we usually work under either explicit or implicit
deadlines. And deadlines make a big difference. The diode contingency
involved a 13-week deadline. If the workers failed to get their average
rejection rate bellow 60 per week, by the deadline, they would lose
the opportunity for the group dinner.
To see the importance of the deadline, consider the contingency without
the deadline: Whenever the workers accumulated 13 weeks of average
rejection rates bellow 60 per week, they would get the group dinner.
A high rejection rate for any one week would not be a big deal; they
could always do better next week. As a result of the removal of the
deadline, it might take them 26 weeks to accumulate the 13 weeks with
a low average rejection rate; it might take even longer. They would
have the opportunity for infinite procrastination: They could always
wait another week before doing the hard work of careful, low-error
anode baking. Without the deadline, this contingency is an analog
to a reinforcement contingency.
But with the deadline contingency, a week’s procrastination
can seriously decrease the chances of getting the group dinner; with
the deadline, there is little room for procrastination. And the deadline
makes this an analog to an avoidance contingency—avoidance of
the loss of the opportunity to receive a reinforcer (the group dinner).
The contingencies most often studied in the Skinner box are reinforcement
contingencies. And, to my knowledge, there have been no Skinner-box
studies of avoidance of the loss of a reinforcer, let alone avoidance
of the loss of the opportunity to receive a reinforcer. But reinforcement
contingencies are not the effective performance-management contingency
most often used in organizational-behavior management to increase
or maintain performance. Instead, the most-often-used contingency
is an analog to avoidance of the loss of the opportunity to receive
a reinforcer, because the effective performance-management contingency
usually has either an implicit or explicit deadline.
Here is another example of an explicit-deadline contingency: a specified
amount of work must be accomplished by a deadline, in order to receive
a reinforcer, such as a bonus, points toward a backup reinforcer,
or praise and recognition. That work might involve meeting a sales
or production quota or completing a project. Failure to do the work
by the deadline would result in loss of the opportunity to receive
the reinforcer. If the delivery of the reinforcer is delayed, as it
often is, then this is an analog to avoidance of the loss of the opportunity
to receive a reinforcer.
But, if there were no deadline, then the contingency would be an analog
to reinforcement, with the accompanying fatal prospect of infinite
procrastination, a common result when there is no deadline.
In summary of this section, because of the necessity of deadlines,
analogs to the avoidance of the loss of the opportunity to receive
a reinforcer are the most common, effective performance management
contingency used to increase or maintain behavior in OBM. And the
loss of the opportunity to receive a reinforcer is an aversive event
or condition. Thus aversive control is necessary in the management
of performance in OBM, even when the incentive is nothing but reinforcers.
Explicit vs.
Implicit Deadlines
An explicit deadline is one where the deadline is indicated
in the rule describing the contingency. However, deadlines are often implicit and thus easily ignored by behavior analysts, though
not by the people whose behavior is involved. Here is an example of
an implicit-deadline contingency: The supervisor walks around the
shop floor once a week dispensing some sort of reinforcer whenever
she sees a worker wearing the proper safety equipment. In this case,
failure to have donned the safety equipment before the deadline, the
time of the supervisor’s visit, would result in loss of the
opportunity to receive that reinforcer. This is avoidance of the loss
of the opportunity to receive a reinforcer. Such a contingency is
usually an analog contingency because in OBM the outcome is usually
delayed; however, if the outcome were immediate praise, the contingency
would be a direct-acting avoidance-of-the-loss contingency, not an
indirect-acting analog.
To make the aversive nature of that loss more obvious, suppose the
dispensed reinforcer were $1,000. The loss of the opportunity for
the $1,000 reinforcer should now be clearly aversive, a loss we would
all be motivated to avoid, with no procrastination. On the other hand,
if the supervisor stopped by every minute or so, then the contingency
is much closer to reinforcement (or its analog): If the worker fails
to put on the safety equipment before this visit, no big deal; he
can always put it on before the next visit, a minute or so later.
And, if not then, still later, which, depending on the immediacy of
the need for the $1,000 and the difficulty of putting on the safety
equipment, could again result in significant procrastination.
And the immediacy of the need for the reinforcer raises the
possibility of another type of implicit deadline. Suppose the worker
will be allowed to receive only one $1,000 reinforcer. And suppose
he will receive that reinforcer whenever he completes a difficult,
effortful task. Then this is either a reinforcement contingency or
its analog. Now also suppose that the worker’s checking account
is so fat that he has no immediate need for that $1,000 reinforcer.
Then, depending on the difficulty and effortfulness of the task, considerable
procrastination may result. In fact, the worker may not be motivated
to complete the task until a need for the $1,000 is eminent. For example,
suppose his checking account has dwindled to the point that if he
doesn’t come up with $1,000 to make the next payment on his
new Audi A8, the car will be reposed. Now we have a serious deadline,
repossession time, and, therefore, an effective analog to avoidance
of the loss of the opportunity to receive a reinforcer, the $1,000,
and avoidance of the loss of a reinforcer, the Audi A8. We also have
the end of procrastination. This illustrates the other sort of implicit
deadline, the time when the reinforcer is needed.
In case this example seems too artificial, let me suggest that people
with no immediate need for cash often fail to get our income tax report
in by April 15, even though a sizeable rebate would result. We more
reliably get the tax report filed, when a penalty-backed deadline
is on the horizon.
Hedonic vs.
Instrumental Reinforcers
The tax example also suggests why we human beings need deadlines in
OBM settings and so many other real-world settings, though rats lead
productive lives in Skinner boxes, even in the absence of looming
deadlines: The rats work for what I call hedonic reinforcers, like
food and water, whereas we human beings often work for what I call
instrumental reinforcers, like money and grades. Hedonic reinforcers
are reinforcers in their own right, without being instrumental (necessary)
for achieving other reinforcers. However, instrumental reinforcers
are only of value if they are instrumental in achieving other reinforcers.
For example, lose change in a foreign currency is of little value,
once we return home; we usually discard it, after it has cluttered
our dresser for a few months; but we hold onto that change, when we
are in the foreign country where it will be instrumental in our obtaining
other reinforcers. In other words, we would have no need for deadlines
if we were at 80% of our ad lib feeding weight and our behavior were
being reinforced with Purina Ralston lab chow.
Potential reinforcement contingencies and their analogs seem to be
ineffective when they involve instrumental rather than hedonic reinforcers.
Thus a reinforcement-based performance-management contingency will
not reliably prevent procrastination, if it is based on money reinforcers
or some other token system. However, if we are hungry, as I now am;
and, if we allow ourselves to have one bite of e-Bistro.com pizza
each time we complete a sentence, as I am now doing, then we stop
staring at the first sentence of this paragraph, as I was doing for
15 minutes, and start knocking out those sentences.
Learned and
Unlearned Hedonic Reinforcers vs. Behavioral Inertia
Incidentally, one might ask why do I not cheat and eat the whole pizza
without writing any sentences. The answer has to do with my Jewish
mother (Malott, 2002-a, 2002-b, & 2002-c). And why do I continue
writing long sentences, rather than short choppy ones, though short
and choppy would allow me quicker access to the pizza? Largely because,
once I start writing the sentence, my behavior is controlled by another
hedonic reinforcer—seeing what I take to be a well-crafted sentence
trickle out onto my computer screen.
Note that, while all instrumental reinforcers are learned reinforcers,
not all hedonic reinforcers are unlearned reinforcers. The sight of
the well-crafted sentence is a learned, hedonic reinforcer, although
it is not powerful enough to overcome the first part of what I call behavioral inertia—the difficulty of starting new tasks;
but it is powerful enough to support the second part of behavioral
inertia—the somewhat lesser difficulty of stopping tasks once
started. In other words, seeing the well-crafted sentence is not enough
of a reinforcer to get me to start typing the sentence, but it is
enough of a reinforcer to keep me at it until I am finished.
However, learned, hedonic reinforcers are not necessarily weak reinforcers;
for example, attention, a smile, and praise are all such powerful
reinforcers that they may be responsible for much of the pathological
behavior we behavior analysts work to eliminate; and the smile and
praise may also be the incentive responsible for why we work so hard
at eliminating that pathological behavior. In other words, I think
learned, hedonic, social reinforcers are what makes our world go around,
even when those reinforcers are clearly not instrumental. (And with
that, I just took my last bight of pizza and, once again, am in serious
trouble, made more serious by being at the end of a paragraph.)
To summarize these sections on hedonic and instrumental reinforcers,
I suggest that reinforcement contingencies with either unlearned or
learned hedonic reinforcers can reliably control our behavior; but
reinforcement contingencies with instrumental reinforcers can not,
at least not without deadlines. And with a deadline, the reinforcement
contingency becomes an avoidance-of-the-loss-of-a-reinforcer contingency.
The same applies to rule-governed analog contingencies, where the
outcome is too delayed to directly reinforce the causal response.
(However, there is one small exception: Getting silverware, an instrumental
reinforcer, can reinforce our asking for it, when we are hungry and
need the silverware to eat the dinner set before us. In other words,
reinforcement will occur with instrumental reinforcers that provide
immediate access to hedonic reinforcers, when the relevant motivating
[i.e., establishing] operation is present for the hedonic reinforcer.)
The
Inferred Direct-acting Contingency
Most performance-management contingencies in OBM involve rule-governed,
analogs to direct-acting behavioral contingencies. They are analog
contingencies because their outcomes are usually too delayed to reinforce
or punish the causal response. And yet they can effectively control
behavior, but only if the person or someone else states the rule describing
that contingency. If Jessup and Stahelski had failed to tell the workers
the rule describing their 13-weeks-of-careful-anode-baking-gets-a-group-dinner
contingency, no doubt the workers would have failed to reduce their
error rate enough to warrant publication of the results in JOBM.
It is so obvious that the workers must know the rules describing such
analog contingencies, if those OBM contingencies are to control their
behavior, that we would be more than justified in firing any manager
or researcher who failed to tell the workers those rules. This is
true even though we would also be justified in firing any researcher
who did tell the rats in the Skinner box the rules describing their
contingencies.
Though the need for rules describing these OBM contingencies is obvious,
the behavioral processes underlying the function of those rules may
be less obvious. I suggest that the statement of the rules function
as an analog to a pairing procedure that causes failure to behave
in accord with those rules to become an aversive condition. For example, If I fail to bake this anode carefully, I will risk causing my
coworkers and me to lose the opportunity for the group dinner.
The statement of this rule verbally pairs failing to bake this
anode carefully (originally a relatively neutral condition) with risk causing my coworkers and me to lose the opportunity for the
group dinner (an aversive condition). The result is that verbal
pairing causes failing to bake this anode carefully to become
a learned aversive condition for the worker, just like pairing the
buzzer with the shock in the Skinner box, causes the originally neutral
buzzer to become a learned aversive condition.
And, if the worker describes his own behavior as failing to bake this
anode carefully (a learned aversive condition), he may escape that
learned aversive condition be baking the anode carefully and thereby
avoid the risk of causing the coworkers and himself to lose the opportunity
for the group dinner (an aversive condition), just like the rat may
press the lever that escapes the buzzer (a learned aversive condition)
and thereby avoid the shock (an unlearned aversive condition).
Note that starting to bake the anode carefully immediately escapes
the aversive condition I’m failing to bake this anode carefully and thereby reinforces careful anode baking, thus explaining how rules
describing indirect-acting delayed outcomes can invoke contingencies
with immediate outcomes that directly control our behavior.
To bring this closer to the academic home of many of you procrastinating
readers, and to highlight the importance of the deadline, consider
the common occurrence of approaching a task’s deadline with
the task undone, not even started. You say the rule to yourself, I’m
not working on the task; so I’m at risk of missing the deadline
and being in serious trouble. And the closer you get to that
deadline, the higher the risk and, therefore, the more aversive that
self-statement of the rule becomes, until you reach a level of unbearable
aversiveness and you start to work on the task, immediately reducing
but probably not completely removing your current state of aversiveness
(conveniently called fear). And that immediate reduction
of fear (aversiveness, if you must) reinforces the escape response
of working on the task and helps avoid the more distant outcome of
being in serious trouble. The deadline is crucial, because without
the deadline, the self-statement describing your being off task would
often not be aversive enough to reinforce the escape response of getting
on task (see the third contingency in Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Three-Contingency
Model of Performance Management
So, just as Mower (1947) used his two-factor theory of avoidance
to account for the processes underlying the effectiveness of avoidance
contingencies in basic animal research, so can we use a version of
that two-factor theory to account for the processes underlying the
effectiveness of performance-management contingencies involving analogs
to the avoidance of the loss of reinforcers in OBM. One “process”
is the indirect-acting analog to the avoidance contingency (the performance-management
contingency), and the more fundamental process is the direct-acting
escape contingency.
The
Jewish-Mother Syndrome
However, there is one element missing from the three-contingency
model of performance management—the Jewish mother, the early
childhood influence with unreasonably high performance standards,
who would never let herself or her children off the hook, never let
anyone cop out on following the right rules, on doing the right thing,
never let anyone procrastinate (Malott, 2002-a, 2002-b, & 2002-c).
But there is great variation in the extent to which we have had effective
Jewish mothering; and, therefore, there is great variation in how
close we get to the deadline, before fear of being in serious trouble
ramps up enough to motivate our making the escape response of getting
on task. Because of your early childhood training, some of you get
into an unreasonable panic, as soon as the task is assigned, and thereby
get everything done on time and usually ahead of time. Others of us
maintain an unreasonable cool, until it is too late to meet the deadline;
therefore we rarely get anything done on time, if done at all. But
most of us are in the mediocre middle, not overwhelming successes
but not complete failures.
What the performance-management contingency does is compensate for
inadequate Jewish mothering. The less Jewish mothering, the tighter
the performance-management contingency must be, with more frequent
deadlines, correspondingly smaller tasks per deadline, and perhaps
more sizeable outcomes, though more frequent deadlines with smaller
tasks per deadline is probably more important than the size of the
outcomes. However, there is nothing natural about performance-management
contingencies; even the tightest of these rule-governed analog contingencies
requires at least a modicum of early-child Jewish mothering. Absent
that crucial behavioral history and the resultant set of fears, the
performance manager needs to make the immediate delivery of M&Ms
contingent on each response.
Wiegand
and Geller’s Critique of Aversive Control in OBM
Wiegand and Geller (this issue) criticized the implications the three-contingency
model, the implication that aversive control is not only pervasive
but also crucial in OBM. And though they seem to argue that aversive
control is not crucial to effective performance management, they seem
mainly to argue that aversive control is just plain bad. I will now
try to address those arguments.
The
Jewish Mother Syndrome
Geller is comfortable with my use of the Jewish mother metaphor,
as long as I keep it as an inside joke, restricted to the pages of
JOBM, fearing that if the Jewish mother gets out of her bag, she will
be bad PR for OBM (Geller, 2002). However my experience has been just
the opposite: The great majority of undergraduate and graduate students
and participants in OBM workshops with whom I have worked have not
been indoctrinated with the sort of flower-child fear of the fall
out of aversive control that is so prominent in many traditional behavior
analysts. And those people with whom I have worked appreciate the
more realistic analysis of behavior that addresses the importance
of aversive control in everyday life and in performance management
as opposed to the unrealistic, simplistic extrapolations from the
reinforcement contingency of the Skinner box. In fact I presented
my behavior analysis of the crucial importance of the Jewish Mother
Syndrome to NYSABA at a conference near the Catskills to an audience
that was mainly Jewish mothers or children of Jewish mothers (Malott,
2002-c); and they were far from offended; they laughed at the all
the jokes, said the analysis was right on, and most importantly, said
it was kosher.
Furthermore, I have seen no evidence that I or my students have perpetrated
the “serious societal harm” that Geller fears will result
from my “potentially dangerous message about negative reinforcement.”
(Geller, 2002, p. 119); my students and I are a gentle, fun loving
group of behavior analysts. And I would be curious to know if he has
detected any creeping sadism infecting his lab, since “the ‘Jewish
Mother Syndrome’ has been added to the verbal repertoire”
of those who work there (Geller, 2002, p. 120).
On
Loving Aversive Control
I am not saying we should use the cattle prod in place of M&Ms
or smiley faces. What I am saying is that, in OBM, we usually use
outcomes that are delayed rather than immediate and reinforcers that
are instrumental rather than hedonic. And under those conditions,
if we wish to increase or maintain performance, the performance-management
contingencies must have deadlines, to prevent procrastination. And
deadlines always convert analogs to reinforcement into analogs to
avoidance, and avoidance always involves aversive control.
However, aversive control does not mean an aversive life. Every time
you walk through a doorway your behavior is under the control of avoidance/punishment
contingencies. Otherwise, you would eventually be black and blue and
broken. But the walk through the doorway is not normally experienced
as aversive because the avoidance responses are so easy to make and
any single aversive outcome is so minimally aversive. However if you
are doing plumbing work cramped under the kitchen sink and are constantly
whacking your head on the bottom of the sink and your knuckles on
the wrench, we’re talking really aversive.
And every time you drive to work your behavior is under the control
of avoidance/punishment contingencies. Otherwise, you would be dead
by now. But that drive is not normally experienced as aversive, unless,
of course you are driving on I94 into Detroit or Chicago during rush
hour, where the probability of a serious accident is aversively high.
So the goal of the performance manager who wants to be both effective
and humane is to use deadlines that are frequent, with tasks that
are easily performed, and outcomes that are small, so that working
under the performance-management contingencies is as delightful as
a leisurely drive down a country lane.
Wiegand
and Geller’s Critique of Aversive Control—The Details
Wiegand and Geller say, “It is surprising (i.e.., disappointing)
to learn of such strong support for negative reinforcement (i.e.,
aversive control) from an astute and experienced behaviorist (i.e.,
Malott)” (Wiegand & Geller, this issue). I think they are
wrong about the disappointing part but on the mark about the astute
part.
Radical Behaviorism
They gone on to say, “Such a stance flies in the face of radical
behaviorism (as well as basic OBM philosophy)…” I think
they define radical behaviorism too broadly by implying that everything
Skinner says defines radical behaviorism. I suggest that, instead
radical behaviorism is a philosophical point of view Skinner developed
in arguing that private events are a legitimate domain of inquiry
for the science of behavior analysis, even though the methodological
behaviorist’s can not obtain inter-observer reliability measurements
for such events (Skinner, 1953, p. 257-282). Even Skinner sometimes
used his own term a little too loosely in talking about a radical
behavioral approach to basic animal research. Furthermore, I think
most behavior analysts use the term a little too loosely in fashionably
identifying themselves as radical behaviorists when they are really
methodological behaviorists who would breakout in hives if they got
with in ten feet of a private event. Radical behaviorism is too important
a concept to allow it to degenerate into the role of fashionable synonym
for behavior analysis.
Forbid Topics
for Societal Good?
And Geller (2002, p. 119) says that stressing the necessity of aversive
control “sends a potentially dangerous message about negative
reinforcement that could cause serious societal harm.” To me,
that is a little like warning, if we talk about the importance of
positive reinforcement, then we will interfere with people’s
free will and make them dependent on reinforcers, like denying operant
conditioning and determinism will give the people more freedom and
dignity. I am not advocating spouse abuse. I am simply describing
the way both natural and effective performance-management contingencies
work. And, in fact, I think serious professional and societal harm
does result from a superficial analysis of these contingencies based
on simplistic extrapolation from basic animal research.
Freedom Now?
Wiegand and Geller say, “B. F. Skinner himself warned against
the use of negative reinforcement, stating it interferes with one’s
sense of freedom (Skinner, 1971).” But, I think what Skinner
warned against was the use of punishment contingencies, not negative
reinforcement (escape) contingencies, though that is a technical quibble,
as the spirit of his argument was against aversive control, which
would include both punishment and escape contingencies. However, I
think his opposition to aversive control was not in order to maintain
a reinforcement-generated sense of freedom, because being a determinist,
he considered freedom an illusion beyond which he wished us to go.
(Incidentally, I use the term escape contingency, rather
than negative reinforcement contingency, because most laypeople
and a few behavior analysts confuse negative reinforcement with punishment. And I will use aversive control to encompass
escape, avoidance, and punishment.)
Again, when most behaviorists, not just Skinner, have argued against
aversive control they have argued against the use of punishment contingencies,
though they might have felt the same about escape contingencies; it
may just be that the role of escape and avoidance contingencies in
performance management was less clear and therefore of less concern.
Punishment
However, even when sophisticated behavior analysts have argued against
the effectiveness of punishment contingencies, their arguments have
been disappointingly unsophisticated and unempirical, often based
on poor, asymmetrical illogic and the old Skinner (1938) punishment
experiment using a brief 10-minute phase of mild punishment (the pressed
lever would slap up against the rat’s paws). This brief, mild
punishment contingency failed to reduce the total amount of responses
in 220 minutes of extinction. Those arguing against the effectiveness
of punishment ignore a large amount of subsequent empirical data showing
that continual punishment with a sufficiently intense aversive stimulus
can, of course, permanently reduce the rate of responding (Azrin,
1960). And, of course, punishment is even more effective, if an alternative
response will produce the same reinforcer as the punished response
(Azrin & Holtz, 1966).
The poor, asymmetrical illogic is that punishment contingencies (and
presumably escape contingencies) are only temporarily effective because,
when you remove the contingencies, the response rate will recover
to baseline rate; therefore punishment contingencies are inferior
to positive reinforcement contingencies. And the unempirical, illogical
implication is that when you remove reinforcement contingencies, the
behavior will not return to baseline, will not extinguish. (Incidentally,
these arguments were made well before the concept of the behavioral
trap was conceived).
But not only does this asymmetrical illogic imply the denial of extinction
following reinforcement, it also ignores the empirical data supporting
the impressively long duration of resistance to recovery that can
be obtained following the termination of a punishment contingency
(Blount, Drabman, Wilson, & Stewart, 1982; Lane, Wesolowski, &
Burke, 1989; Kushner, 1968; Sajwaj, Libet, & Agras, 1974). Furthermore,
this asymmetrical illogic ignores the empirical data supporting the
impressive persistence of avoidance responses, after the avoided event
has ceased to occur (Solmon, Kamin, & Wynne, 1953).
Wiegand and Geller argue against the importance of deadline-generated
aversive control in effective performance-management contingencies
by saying, “This idea runs contrary to basic theory in applied
behavior analysis (Daniels, 2000; Geller, 2001c, d), …. While
it is true that Daniels and Geller criticize aversive control, it
may not be true that they are the only ones to set the parameters
of basic theory in applied behavior analysis.
But, more importantly, their “basic theory in applied behavior
analysis” presents a more recent variation of the poor, asymmetrical
logic just discussed: “… when people are working under
the guise of negative reinforcement, they will tend to engage in only
the minimum amount of behavior necessary to avoid the aversive consequences.”
This erroneously implies that people will work well above the minimum,
when the behavior is maintained by reinforcement-based performance-management
contingencies.
Perhaps the authors were thinking about intrinsic or built-in contingencies,
like the reinforcing value of completing a task, for example a beautiful
painting or a well-written JOBM article. But even here, there is no
reason to think people will work above the minimum required to produce
that reinforcing outcome; and we would not necessarily want them to.
Or perhaps they were thinking about performance management procedures
where the contingencies are based on the behavior of producing the
outcome (based on the process) rather than on the outcome itself.
Yes, then our tendency to do the minimum required can be a problem,
if that minimum only meets the letter of the performance management
contingencies and fails to meet the spirit of producing the desired
outcome. But this problem will arise whether we use reinforcement-based
performance-management contingencies or escape and avoidance-based
contingencies.
Furthermore, as indicated earlier, both experimental and applied data
contradict the argument suggesting the relatively transient nature
of aversive control compared with positive reinforcement. In fact,
punishment and avoidance procedures often maintain their effects long
after those procedures have been terminated.
“Malott seems to be unaware of a wealth of literature (primarily
in the field of education) spanning several decades of research on
achievement motivation. … The lack of reference to this literature
in Malott’s commentary implicates an important lesson for all
of us in the fields of applied behavior analysis and OBM.”
First of all, Wiegand and Geller do a disservice to the fields of
applied behavior analysis and OBM, when they use my functional illiteracy
to implicate an important lesson, as I am not representative of the
scholars in our field. Not only do I not read mentalistic research,
I don’t even read behavioristic research; in fact the only thing
I read is computer magazines and pornography, and even there all I
do is look at the pictures.
But, Wiegand and Geller do us a service by calling our attention to
the “wealth of literature … on achievement motivation
. . .” However, we must approach this cognitivist literature
cautiously. Which I will now attempt to do.
Introspective
Behaviorism vs. Correlational Studies: Cognitive Motivational Theories
Need-Achievement
Theory
Most of the work on Atkinson’s need-achievement theory dichotomizes
people into those with a high need for achievement, a high hope for
success, the winners, and those with a high fear of failure, the whiners
(Covington & Omelich, 1991). And though more recent theorists
have dealt with additional categories into which to classify people,
these theorists all tend to reflect Atkinson’s orientation that
achievement motivation causes us to go forth and conquer the world,
whereas fear motivation causes us to crouch timidly in the corner;
and that is why some people are winners and others losers (Covington
& Omelich, 1979).
According to these theorists, all virtue goes to those with high hope
for success, the success seekers: They are risk takers (which in this
context seems to be considered good). They set realistic goals. They
are intrinsically engaged, persistent, and self-confident. However,
the failure fearers, the failure avoiders, have unrealistic achievement
standards, doubt their ability, and self-criticize rather self-reward.
The extent to which we strive to achieve is a result of where we fall
on this two-dimensional approach-avoidance continuum. And where we
fall is a result of the emotional conflict set up by the inner war
between our approach and avoidance tendencies.
Achievement
Motivation: Ineffective Natural Contingencies vs. Insufficient Motivation
But like so much of cognitive psychology, achievement-motivation theory
is essentially the simplistic misconceptions of the layman dressed
up in Ph.D.’s clothing. Most laymen and all too many behavior
analysts think that if a person does not do something, it is because
they do not sufficiently value the outcome their actions would produce.
So the ineffective lay intervention consists of the traditional but
misguided motivational approach to performance management described
earlier: Laymen try to increase the extent that the person values
the outcome.
For example, if students fail to study hard and thereby fail to earn
good grades, it looks like they do not value what they would learn
from studying and they do not value the good grades. In other words,
most laymen and all too many behavior analysts do not understand that
failure to work effectively toward these goals is a result of the
ineffective natural contingencies described earlier, not a result
of a lack of appreciation of the value of the outcomes such effective
work would produce.
So unfortunately, rather than implementing effective performance-management
contingencies to supplement the ineffective natural contingencies,
those responsible for helping high-risk students in the university
bring in motivational speakers to convince those students that learning
and good grades are of value; and the behavior analysts responsible
for teaching all the students, both high and low risk, conveniently
dismiss their poorer students as having other priorities than academic
success.
But my informal surveys show that all students would love to get good
grades in their courses—of course. Furthermore, detailed anonymous
course evaluations consistently show that those students appreciate
our effective performance-management contingencies that cause them
to do the hard work needed to master the course objectives and get
good grades. In other words, procrastination does not mean people
do not care; they may care quite a bit. Procrastination just means
people can not get their act together under the existing, ineffective,
natural contingencies.
For another example, the person who consistently over eats and therefore
is obese does not do so because he fails to value good health and
a ripped body; he does so because the natural contingencies are ineffective.
The extent to which the obese person cares should be apparent to all
when that person goes to the extreme of submitting himself to gastric
bypass surgery.
Or take this example: “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing
promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised
in the gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not
too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about
with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like
an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because
he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased" (Lewis, 2001, p. 26).
In other words, theologians also make the mistake of believing that
our settling for the devil’s distractions is because we fail
to appreciate the value the Lord’s rewards, when the real problem
is that the natural contingencies are ineffective in supporting our
following the straight and narrow path to infinite joy, because each
step produces too small a reinforcing outcome even though the culmination
of all those steps would lead us to heaven’s gates.
Fear of Failure:
Active vs. Passive Avoidance
Unfortunately, most, but not all, of the writing by cognitive-motivational
theorists fails to distinguish between active avoidance and
what used to be called passive avoidance. Passive avoidance
results from punishment contingencies. Using this terminology, we
would say the rat passively avoids pressing the lever, if in the past,
that response has been punished by the contingent presentation of
a shock; in other words, the rat no longer presses the lever.
But, currently, we tend to reserve avoidance for active avoidance.
And active avoidance results from avoidance contingencies. So we would
say, the rat presses the lever because lever pressing has previously
prevented or avoided the onset of a shock.
Passive avoidance refers to the response suppression by punishment
contingencies, while active avoidance refers to response
support by avoidance contingencies. And the cognitive motivation theorists
generally write as if the only effect of fear of failure is the suppression
or punishment of behavior that should be occurring. For example, we
fail to make the cold sales call we should make, for fear of rejection.
However, cognitive motivation theorists tend to ignore the occasions
when they should laud the suppressive effects of fear of failure,
for example when fear of failure suppressed our investing in Enron.
In other words, sometimes fear of failure is dysfunctional but often
it is functional.
More importantly, cognitive motivation theorists usually overlook
active avoidance behavior supported by fear of failure in the world
of work, as well as almost every other world we live in; and this
active avoidance behavior is crucial for our success, not to mention
our survival. We put on a safety helmet, not to get a smiley face
and feel good about ourselves, but to avoid closed-head brain injury.
And we buckle up, not to get a smiley face and feel good about ourselves,
but to avoid closed-head brain injury. And we stay up all night working
on our JOBM article, not to get a smiley face and feel good about
ourselves, but to avoid looking like the completely irresponsible
slacker we know we really are. Contrary to the implications of cognitive
motivation theorists, fear of failure is essential, if we are to maintain
reasonable standards of safety, productivity, and quality. In other
words, sometimes fear of failure is dysfunctional but often it is
functional.
The Irrelevance
of Cognitive Motivation Theories
The literature on achievement-motivation and self-worth theories seems
largely irrelevant to everyday OBM, including behavioral safety. This
literature tends to address whether or not someone will decide to
go to college or flip burgers at McDonalds or write the great American
rock opera, not whether they will put on their safety goggles, buckle
up, get to work on time, or hide their rejected baked anodes to avoid
losing their low-rejects bonus. It is not that this literature is
irrelevant to life or to areas that OBM should eventually address,
but it seems irrelevant to turn-of-the-century JOBM.
For example, I hope no cognitive-motivational theorist would suggest
that workers fail to put on safety goggles because of fear of failure.
And I hope no cognitive motivational theorist would be too critical
of me for not wanting to cross the street on crutches in heavy traffic,
though my reluctance is clearly a result of my fear of failure.
Self-worth
Theory
Self-approval
and/vs. Social approval
According to self-worth theorists, self-acceptance is the highest
human priority; we work to avoid losing it and we work to build it
(Covington & Roberts, 1994, p. 161). And I think that’s
close to on the mark. Of course, from a behavior-analytic perspective,
one of the main reasons self-worth is such a powerful learned reinforcer
is because self-worth or self-approval is paired with social approval.
In other words, mommy said, Dick is cool and gave me a cookie,
making Dick is cool one of my greatest learned reinforcers,
whether she says it or you say it (social approval), or whether I
say it (self-approval). So self-approval, or self-acceptance, is one
of my greatest learned reinforcers, if not my highest human priority.
And I presume to speak for all humanity.
But there are weird, sick little twists in our value system. For example
there have been a couple of famous cases where runners have taken
the taxi for part of the Boston Marathon, thereby greatly improving
their time and position in the finishers’ list, not enough to
win anything, but enough to give themselves considerable bragging
rights back home. In other words, social approval wins out over self-approval: I may be a cheating scum bag, but everyone else things I’m
great; and that’s good enough for me. Amazing.
For others of us, self-worth or self-esteem or self-approval is more
a function of living up to our own standards of moral, personal, and
professional performance than it is a function of earning social approval,
though praise from others is lovely and scorn or rejection by others
is painful. So, self-approval may win out over social approval, even
though we are also social-approval junkies, even though we will strive
for the approval of those whose opinion we have no reason to respect,
and even though we are crushed by the rejection and disapproval of
those same people. For example, picking up a smiling baby and having
the infant immediately start crying and screaming is a most horrible
rejection, even though that baby is in no position to judge our true
worth. None-the-less, social-approval junkies though we are, at least
sometimes our own self-approval can be more valuable to us than the
approval of the screaming baby or the screaming colleague. As Cyrano
de Bergerac said, All the money and approbation from a wealthy
patron is nothing compared to the reinforcing value of one honest
line from one of my own poems, or words to that effect.
However, the cognitive-motivational theorists seem to place more emphasis
on self-worth as a result of self-evaluation of our own abilities
and accomplishments than as a result of the evaluation of others (Covington
& Omelich, 1991). In behavior-analytic terms, positive self-evaluation
(self-worth) becomes such a powerful reinforcer because of its pairing
with the instrumentality of our skills in successfully producing other
hedonic reinforcers. Thus stimuli arising from behaving skillfully,
and therefore successfully, become powerful learned reinforcers, so
powerful that many of us have wasted hours at a time on dumb computer
games like Tetris, lining up the blocks properly before they hit the
floor, just because we can pick up those cheap, but powerful, skill
reinforcers, those self-worth reinforcers. So, from a more general
view, self-worth becomes and remains even more powerful because of
its continued pairing with skill-produced reinforcers as well as social
reinforcers.
Shame, Humiliation,
and Guilt
Cognitive-motivational theorists address the issue of our self-worth
as a function of our success and failure at doing what we should do.
And, in that context, they address shame, the important generic concept
that encompasses humiliation, the learned aversive consequence
of trying hard but failing because you are incompetent, and guilt,
the learned aversive consequence of not trying hard enough, not giving
it your best shot (Covington & Omelich, 1985).
Incidentally, while most behaviorists may flinch at shame, humiliation, guilt, and fear, and while
there may be no differentiated physiological or subjective reaction
associated with the experience of each of these “emotions,”
the terms can be quite useful in calling attention to the different
types of environmental conditions that evoke a learned aversive condition.
And, according to my introspective behavioral theory of motivation,
the aversiveness of each of those types of shame depends on the extent
to which our Jewish mother has put guilt trips on us when we have
not tried hard enough and the extent to which she has humiliated us
when we have tried but failed.
Although the cognitive motivational theorists address the preceding
use of the term guilt, they do not address another, equally important,
use of the term guilt—the learned aversive consequence of doing
something you should not do, like taking a taxi for half the Boston
marathon or hiding the rejected baked anodes to avoid losing the low-rejects
bonus. And again, this guilt is also a function of our behavioral
histories, the history of our Jewish mother pairing inappropriate
behavior with aversive morality lectures. In general, these cognitive-motivational
theorists seem to be concerned with what motivates us to do or not
do what we should do, while they seem to ignore what motivates us
to do or not do what we should not do.
Malott’s
Three-dimensional Need-achievement Model.
Though most of the research on Atkinson’s need-achievement theory
has been on a one-dimensional version of his two-dimensional model,
a close look at the one-dimensional version, suggests that version
is logically flawed. On one end of the presumed dimension is high
hope for success (i.e., high expected probability of success),
with high fear of failure (i.e. high aversiveness of
failure) on the other end. But hope for success and aversiveness
of failure do not fall on the same dimension. Low hope for success should be on the other end of a hope dimension, with low fear
of failure on the other end of a fear dimension. Otherwise, it
is like trying to construct a single dimension with red on one end
and big on the other. It doesn’t work.
The importance of this confusion about dimensions becomes clearer
when we consider Covington and Omelich’s (1991) elaborate of
Atkinson’s original two-dimensional model for classifying people
according to their need for achievement. One dimension is hope for
success, going from high to low, with the other dimension being fear
of failure of failure, also going from high to low, so that a person
could be high in hope for success and low in fear of failure, high
in hope and also high in fear, etc. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2.
However, there is a third, relevant dimension, one this model ignores;
but the ambiguity of the terms hope and fear make
that third dimension difficult to spot. As these theorists use hope
and fear, they mean expected probability for hope and value or amount of aversiveness for fear.
Though at first glance, it might appear that they are using fear to
mean an expected low probability of success; they aren’t.
The missing dimension is amount of the reinforcing value of success.
So that when we use Figure 2 to categorize someone, we might say the
person has high expectation of the likelihood of success and also high fear of failure (failure is highly aversive),
but we do not know how much the person values success. For example,
the person might have high expectation of the likely hood of success and high fear of failure (failure is highly aversive)
and either put a high value or a low value on
success. In other words, fearing failure and valuing
success can be along two independent dimensions. So, the extent
to which the person values success, the extent to which success
is a reinforcer, might then be crucial in determining whether
the person (or organism) responds. For example, if the rat presses
the lever, it will get either food (success) or shock (failure).
Whether or not the rat presses the lever is a function not only of
the probability of getting the food and the intensity of the shock,
as in Atkinson’s two-dimensional model, but also a function
of the amount of the food (incentive) or the amount of food deprivation
(motivating operation), as in the three-dimensional model.
Now, while this is a serious theoretical omission, I am not sure it
is a serious practical omission. People obviously vary greatly in
the probability that they will succeed in accomplishing difficult
tasks. And I think they vary greatly in the extent to which they fear
the humiliation of failure, depending on the effectiveness of their
Jewish mother. But, contrary to popular opinion, we all may be fairly
homogeneous in the extent to which we value success. Our culture may
have been effective in programming us all to highly value driving
with our beautiful/handsome lover/spouse in our brand-new, 12-cylinder
Italian Ferrari to commencement, where we will graduate summa cum
laude, before flying our private jet to LA, where we will split our
time between posing for Time magazine’s person-of-the-year cover,
staring in United Artists’ much anticipated $500,000,000 mega-hit,
which we also wrote and will direct, and recording our next sure-to-be-platinum
hip-hop-klezmer album on our own indi label, our only problem being
how we will find time for our trip to the Olympics, where we are expected
to take home the gold. Yes, we may all be more or less alike in the
extent to which we highly value that mix of reinforcers; but we all
vary greatly in the extent to which we will succeed in even approximating
those reinforcers, and we may also vary greatly in the extent to which
we fear the humiliation of failing to achieve the attainment of those
reinforcers. So, it remains to be determined whether practical differences
in performance are also determined by value of success as well as
hope for success and fear of failure.
(Incidentally, Figure 2’s representation of Atkinson’s
two-dimensional need-achievement model differs significantly from
Wiegand and Geller’s [this issue] Figure 1 quadripolar model
of need achievement adopted from Covington [1992]. Their model is
based on the following two dimensions: approaching success and avoiding
failure; and often, though not always, those two dimensions can be
independent and thus represented in a two-dimensional space. Furthermore,
that is a useful way of looking at the implications of cognitive motivational
theorizing, the implications for what the motivated person actually
does. But, I think that diagram does not capture the essence of the
actual theorizing those cognitivists did as well as does Figure 2
in the present article with its two dimensions of probability of success
and aversiveness of failure.)
The Four Personality
Types
Fear of failure. Covington & Omelich (1985) argue that by
adulthood, we realize effort is not enough and ability is the big
deal; therefore many people (e.g., their college-student subjects)
fear failure because of the humiliation of not having enough ability
to succeed more than they fear the guilt of not having given it their
best shot (i.e., the aversiveness of this humiliation is greater than
the aversiveness of this guilt). And, therefore, those adults procrastinate
and fail to do what is necessary to succeed (e.g., fail to study enough
for their upcoming exam), so they can avoid the humiliation of not
having enough ability by coping out to the less aversive guilt of
not having tried hard enough.
But, according to preschool fatalism, a cornerstone of my
introspective-behavioral theory of motivation, the values we acquire
as children tend to rule us the rest of our lives, in spite of our
rational understanding of the irrationality of those values, and in
spite of years trying to liberate ourselves from those values through
talk therapy (psychoanalytic or rational-emotive). So, I doubt that
there is a major shift in our humiliation/guilt balance, as we move
into adulthood.
More importantly, I do not think people intentionally procrastinate
and goof off because of fear of the failure-induced humiliation of
not having enough skills, talent, or brains. We need not infer this
sort of hidden psychodynamic motivation. Instead, the three-contingency
model of performance management calls our attention to those old,
familiar ineffective natural contingencies, with ineffectively small,
but cumulatively significant outcome of starting to study for the
exam right now--I’ll start as soon as Jay Leno’s show
is over, if I’m not too sleepy by that time. At least some
cognitive motivational theorists tend not to say the students do not
value the knowledge, skills, good grades, and eventual good jobs that
result from hard study.
Similarly, why do people not buckle up or mop up industrial spills,
or do routine equipment maintenance, or bake the anodes carefully?
I think not because of the cognitivist’s fear of the humiliating,
low-ability implications of failure. Instead, I suggest they do not
do all of those important things, because the natural contingencies
are ineffective in supporting that behavior—one single instance
of not doing the desired behavior probably won’t matter that
much.
Covington & Omelich (1991) also say that people who take on more
tasks than they can handle do so to provide an excuse for their failure;
and they need this excuse because of their overwhelming fear of the
humiliation of failure—The reason I failed is because I
tried to do more than anyone could have done, not because I’m
incompetent. Most people I know take on more than they can handle,
but I think we do so more because of the social approval for saying
yes, the social disapproval for saying no, greed, and unrealistic
planning. Our plates are too full, simply because our eyes that are
bigger than our tummies, not because of some hidden psychodynamic
motivation.
But, again, it should be hard for even the most committed cognitive-motivational
theorists to argue that people intentionally over commit so they can
avoid the humiliation of not having the ability to buckle up, put
on their hard hat, mop up the water spill, or squirt a little oil
in the gears every few days.
In any event, according to the cognitive-motivational theorists, a
high fear of failure is basically bad and accounts for why people
actually fail. If those who fear failure did not fear failure, they
would set more realistic achievement goals, would not procrastinate,
would be confident about their abilities, and would be inclined more
to self-reward rather than self-criticism, which they do excessively
(Covington & Omelich, 1991).
Hope for success. While cognitive-motivational theorists consider
a high fear of failure basically bad and the reason why people fail,
they consider a high hope for success, basically good and the reason
why people succeed. Those who anticipate success are realistic goal
setters, willing to take risks, are motivated by the intrinsic reinforcers
of doing the task, and are self-confident (Covington & Omelich,
1991). However, even to the extent that anticipating success may be
correlated with actual success, the correlation is not necessarily
a causal relation. In other words, if someone does not anticipate
success, that may be more a function of realistic expectations than
a result of a psychopathology. For example, at this point in my life,
I would not anticipate much success, if I were to switch to ballet
as a profession.
Success orienters. According to the cognitivsts, there are four basic
types of people, corresponding to the four cells in Figure 2. Three
types of people are losers and one type of people are winners. The
winners are the success oriented, those who not only have high hope
or expectation of success but also have low fear of failure (failure
is not aversive for them). They have all the virtues attributed in
the preceding paragraph to those with high hope for success.
I have known a lot of very successful people, both students and professionals.
And many of them realistically anticipate success; a few may be realistic
goal setters, though most bight off more than they can comfortably
chew; some are willing to take risks and some are not, most enjoy
the intrinsic reinforcers of their work; a few are self-confident
to the point of offensive over confidence, whereas many are perpetually
worried about their work.
Failure acceptors. Perhaps the worst kind of losers are the failure
acceptors, people who have little hope for success but also do not
find failure that aversive. However, Covington and Omelich (1991)
seem reluctantly to admit that this may not be indicative of a pathological
personality type or a cognitive-motivational flaw but rather a realistic
assessment of low ability and a healthy adjustment to that unfortunate
condition. They also admit that being a failure acceptor may not be
a fundamental personality type but might be situational, much as I
am a failure acceptor in the field of ballet though not in the field
of behavior analysis. But to the extent that being a failure acceptor
is a healthy adjustment to ones limitations, then it is probably not
the cause of failure. And it certainly seems unlikely that the failure
accepting personality is an explanation for why people fail to buckle
up, wear their hard hats, etc.
Incidentally, Covington and Omelich (1991, p. 176) find that “failure-acceptors
express as much ambition and desire to do well as do success-oriented
individuals…” In other words, motivational lecturers stressing
the benefits of success will not be an effective performance-management
intervention for these maximally unsuccessful people; they already
appreciate the value of being winners.
Failure avoiders. Though the failure acceptors may be the consummate
losers, it is the failure avoiders who receive the bulk of the cognitivist
scorn. These failure avoiders think they have little hope for success
but find failure highly aversive. These are the ones who procrastinate
and over commit and blame others, in order to maintain their self-worth
(Covington and Omelich, 1991). They are unlikely to start tasks and
unlikely to stick with those tasks they have started (Covington, &
Roberts, 1994). Furthermore, they have this low rate of success in
all areas of their life, not just one (e.g., school).
I agree that there are many people who have low productivity and low
success in many or perhaps all areas of their lives. However, my observation
is that rather than thinking they have little hope for success, they
often have a naïvely high expectation of success, anticipating
that it will take much less effort than it really does. In addition,
their fear of failure does not kick in soon enough to get them started
with the task in time to complete it with success. Again, they procrastinate
because of ineffective natural contingencies, not to protect their
self-worth. And the extent to which they blame others for their failure
is a function of their reinforcement history in terms of escape from
external blame and their history of external punishment for admission
of culpability.
Overstrivers. Finally there is the group whom the cognitivists
pejoratively label the overstrivers, in spite of the fact that they
are bright, have good study skills, make good grades, are generally
successful, and also have high hope for success (Covington & Omelich,
1991). In the cognitivists’ view, the fatal flaw of the “overstrivers”
is that they find failure very aversive. So the cognitivists really
go after them, even criticizing them for studying more than the success
orienters, calling their study superficial, rote, meticulous over
preparation, saying they are overly self-disciplined and have too
many worries about the future.
Furthermore, all of this hard work is presumably because of their
pathological motivation: their demonic drive to succeed, their anxiety
about failure, their evaluation anxieties, the constant fear of failing
to achieve their ultimate unrealistic goal—perfection, their
intrapsychic conflict between approach and avoidance tendencies that
is the cognitivist’s hallmark for overstrivers. And not only
that, these “overstrivers” take health-risking tranquilizers,
etc. to reduce their pre-exam stress (Covington & Omelich, 1991;
Covington, & Roberts, 1994).
In defense of the “overstriver.” Well, the cognitivists
dis all the people I love and respect—my best students, my most
productive colleagues, and me. I do not know what world the cognitivists
live in, but every productive person in my world is running scared,
and people who are not running scared spend their lives vegging out
in front of the TV.
A highly respected colleague once put it this way: I work on teaching
my classes until the stack of requests for letters of recommendation
gets so aversively high that I start writing them, until the stack
of ungraded student papers gets so aversively high that I start grading
them, until the stack of something else gets so aversively high, etc.
(Jack Michael, personal communication, circa 1980).
Here’s another respected colleague’s view: She saw a Peking
Opera juggler who strutted on stage in a white suit and black shirt
and did a few cocky Saturday Night Fever disco poses. And then his
lovely assistant pushed out a table with four plates on it. One at
a time, she set all four plates simultaneously spinning on their edges.
When the final plate started spinning, the first plate slowed down
to the point that it was about to topple over. The juggler confidently
set it spinning again and successively re-spun each of the remaining
plates just as it was about to topple. He gave a cocky bow and then
noticed that lovely assistant had just brought out another table and
set four more plates spinning, greatly increasing the difficulty of
the his task. And with increasing consternation, the juggler saw her
bring out three more tables of spinning plates, until the harried
man was rushing from one end of the table to the other, desperately
keeping all 20 plates spinning. My respected colleague put it this
way: That’s a perfect metaphor for the life of a successful
professional (Maria Malott, personal communication, circa 1990).
Every successful professional I know is rushing from one tottering
plate to another trying to avoid disaster. And like the rest of the
cognitivists’ “overstrivers,” these highly successful
people have only one secret—deadline-induced avoidance contingencies.
None of them suffer the cognitivists’ “intrapsychic conflict
between approach and avoidance tendencies.” That faulty analysis
results from confusion between passive avoidance and active avoidance.
Instead of being motivated by “intrapsychic conflict between
approach and avoidance tendencies,” highly successful people
are motivated by intrapsychic harmony between approach and approach
tendencies—the reinforcer of a beautiful demonstration of 20
spinning plates and the reinforcer of having avoided some crashing
plates. It would have been an approach-(passive) avoidance conflict,
if beautiful assistant had kicked the juggler, each time he re-spun
one of the plates; she did not. In sum, highly successful people concurrently
approach success and avoid failure.
Success seeking will motivate me to commit to writing an article or
making a PowerPoint presentation. But avoidance failure will motivate
me to get around to doing the writing or preparing the PowerPoint,
usually just after the last minute. And the large amount of intrinsic
reinforcers involved in these tasks do not suffice unassisted by a
kick in the rear from that looming deadline.
The value and limitations of intrinsic motivation. Again, like
so much of cognitive psychology, the emphasis on intrinsic motivation
(intrinsic reinforcement contingencies) is essentially the naïve,
simplistic misconceptions of the layman dressed up in Ph.D.’s
clothing. Most laymen and, again, all too many behavior analysts think
it is a realistic goal to strive for a world where our behavior is
maintained only by natural reinforcement contingencies involving intrinsic
reinforcers, with none of those false, unnatural, Mickey-Mouse performance-management
contingencies, and certainly none of those aversive contingencies
with all their harmful fallout.
And, I agree that a world based only on intrinsic reinforcers would
be wonderful; but I also think it is impossible to achieve. Furthermore,
I think efforts to accomplish such a world have had more harmful consequences
than all the fall out of the use of avoidance-based performance-management
contingencies designed to maintain healthy, happy, productive behavior.
For example, consider the A. S. Neal Summerhillian, non-coercive,
free-education, do-only-what-feels-good educational systems so popular
in the 60’s; that was an attempt to build an educational world
solely based on intrinsic reinforcers, an attempt that, unfortunately
resulted in students spending most of their time on arts and crafts
and little time on the three r’s.
That does not mean I oppose the use of performance-management contingencies
involving intrinsic reinforcers. In fact, since 1966, I have spent
much of my life, with some success, carefully programming contingencies
involving intrinsic reinforcers into textbooks, workbooks, multi-media
presentations, PowerPoint presentations, PowerPoint programmed instruction,
rat labs, autism practica, and structured seminars, with all of these
of these contingencies designed to reinforcer observing responses,
participation, and engagement in higher education.
These intrinsic reinforcers greatly enhance the student’s eagerness
to participate in education; they greatly enhance the student’s
eagerness to commit their lives to the field of behavior analysis;
and they greatly enhance the social validity of the education systems
in which they are embedded; but they are insufficient to maintain
the hard work necessary to master the concepts and skills necessary
to become a professional behavior analyst. For that we need a combination
of avoidance-based performance-management contingencies and the Jewish
mother.
Wallace’s (1977).article provides my favorite example of the
inadequacy of intrinsic reinforcers to maintain the productive behavior
of the creative genius. The article documents the extreme, coercive
performance-management efforts self-imposed by authors like Hemingway,
Trollope, Conrad, Maugham, Huxley, and Hugo because the intrinsic
reinforcers were inadequate to the task. Overstrivers?
Furthermore, if you are sensitive enough, you can detect a stratosphere
clogged with great poems, short stories, articles, and research ideas
that contained enough intrinsic reinforcers to get their producers
to create them in their heads, to air write them; but the intrinsic
reinforcers were not great enough to get their producers to do the
hard work of writing them down. Similarly, the world’s file
cabinets are full of languishing first drafts of manuscripts on brittle,
aging paper, first drafts that contained enough intrinsic reinforcers
to get their producers to write them down; but the intrinsic reinforcers
were not great enough to get their producers to do the hard work of
revising them a dozen times and submitting them for publication. So
don’t knock the over-striving innovators who approach success
but simultaneously work their butts off to avoid their innovation’s
failing to reach the fruition of implementation.
As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one per cent inspiration (intrinsic
reinforcers) and ninety-nine per cent perspiration (avoidance of failure)
(Quotations, 2003).
Or as Spanish violinist and composer, Pablo Sarasate said, on being
hailed as a genius by a critic, “A genius! For thirty-seven
years I've practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a
genius! (Quotations, 2003).
In sum, intrinsic reinforcers are wonderful but far from sufficient
to get all but the most trivial of jobs done.
Wiegand and Geller on “overstrivers.” Wiegand
and Geller (this issue) say that “overstrivers” (a.k.a.
highly effective people) score relatively low on tolerance. And that
is consistent with my observations. “Overstrivers” often
apply the same high, Jewish-mother standard to others that they apply
to themselves, being no more tolerant of others than they are of themselves,
and being shocked that others do not hold themselves to those same
high standards, for example, being surprised that others are willing
to come to meetings unprepared and thus inconvenience everyone else
because of their own slothfulness. And I occasionally have to deprogram
my most reliable, successful staff members to convince them that their
Jewish-mother standards apply to themselves, but that they should
not be angry with their peers who have not had the benefits of such
effective mothering. Don’t get angry, get performance-management
contingencies.
Wiegand and Geller also say that “overstrivers” are less
than willing to comply with the wishes of others. And I think that
can be true, for example, of people who are able to focus their efforts
on becoming world-class experts. If everyone else wants to party,
and the person needs to go to bed to be fresh for the four hours of
daily practice needed to accumulate the 10,000 hours of deliberate
practice need to be a world-class violinist, (Ericsson & Charness,
1994) that person will either have become insensitive to the frequently
competing wishes of others or will not become a world-class violinist.
And, if that person wants to become the editor of JABA he or she will
insist on putting in the 70 weekly hours of work such an impressive
achievement requires, restricting time with the spouse and kids to
a small amount of really high “quality time.” That person
will be working so hard at avoiding failure that he or she will sit
in the back seat of the car, carefully editing JABA manuscripts, while
the hosts drive him or her on the two-hour trip to the airport, rather
than participating in the intrinsic reinforcers of normally obligatory
chit-chatting social interactions. Some unwillingness to comply with
the distracting wishes of others is what it takes to be a highly successful
person.
Wiegand and Geller say that although the aversive escape/avoidance
contingencies cause the “overstrivers” to succeed, the
aversive contingencies are unpleasant. And I agree; that is the price
of success. Those are the dues you pay, to become a world-class violinist
or an editor of JABA, not that the person chooses to pay those dues
for that success. The Jewish mother made that “choice”
long ago; the adult is just successfully playing out the dance to
mother’s childhood tune.
Wiegand and Geller say that, even if these people are successful,
“they do not seem to be the type of person we would want on
our work team, given the negative characteristics demonstrated by
the research ….” Well, that’s the price of success,
if you want a successful team; and I am absolutely certain that Geller
has a successful team. So I would suggest that the recent adoption
of the concept of Jewish mother syndrome in Geller’s lab might
give him a hint as to a major motivating factor behind his team’s
success.
Conclusion
Psychology has yet to free itself from its psychodiagnostic heritage.
Psychologists, including cognitive motivational theorists, can not
resist inventing dysfunctional categories into which they place people
or labels they can apply to people. Psychologists can not resist designing
tests to facilitate that placement, treating those categories and
labels as reifications that cause behavior, and ignoring the complex,
subtle interactions of historical and current contingencies that cause
people to act in ways that will get them labeled high or low IQed,
normal or autistic, overstrivers or success seekers. We all differ
from each other in many complex ways. We have different behavioral
histories and thus different values (reinforcers and aversive conditions)
and different repertoires. And to force people into these pigeon holes
may be of little analytical value even when there are some correlational
clusters to rationalize those pigeon holes.
In conclusion, I think the cognitive motivational theorists do psychology
a service by raising the issue of avoidance contingencies in human
affairs, but I think they get it almost completely wrong in stressing
the suppressive effects of passive avoidance or punishment contingencies
and generally ignoring the beneficial effects of active avoidance.
In addition, I think they do our field a service by formally raising
the issue of intrinsic reinforcers in human affairs, but again I think
they get it almost completely wrong in suggesting that intrinsic reinforcers
are all we need.
At the end of my rants, I like to add: Of course, this is only my
opinion; and I could be wrong, but probably not.
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