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Behaviorism, Autism, and Procrastination
ContentsNotes from a Radical Behaviorist
Chapter 26
Moral and Legal Control
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FUNDAMENTALS
What’s the meaning of life?
What’s the purpose of life? Every freshman trudges off to college hoping to
find the evasive answer (in addition to an improved social life and the skills
and/or diploma [union card] needed for that high-paying executive position).
But those students with enough
intellectual and self-management skills to make it into their sophomore year
find no answer to this question. And by the time they graduate from college,
they have learned that a search for the meaning of life is appropriate only for
the same greenhorn freshman they now send off in search of sky hooks,
left-handed monkey wrenches, and snipes. The graduating senior knows life has
no purpose, no meaning.
Well, the humble authors of
this book never gave up the search for sky hooks,
left-handed monkey wrenches, snipes, or the purpose of life. And now that we’ve
recently discovered that purpose, we’ll stop to share it with you, before going
on with our search for the left-handed monkey wrench and other illusive goals
of the naive.
GOAL-DIRECTED SYSTEMS DESIGN[1]
At first, it might seem
that the “purpose” of all life is the promotion of its own
well-being. As
But we human beings aren’t
just any life form. We aren’t snails. We aren’t paramecia. We aren’t fungi (the
plural of fungus). We’re thoughtful, reasoning life forms - at least sometimes.
So, though our lives may not have a purpose, they can have.
THE WELL-BEING OF LIFE FORMS (HUMAN, NONHUMAN, AND
PLANT)
Regardless of how humanity
got here, whether through divine decree or cosmic accident, we suggest that
humanity should select as its purpose the well-being of life in the universe.
We suggest this, even though a careful analysis shows that purpose doesn’t
logically follow from
Regardless of whether we
are now atheists, agnostics, or born-again true believers, most of us have
grown up in the context of one or another of the world’s great religions. So
most of us have acquired learned values (learned reinforcers
and aversive conditions) that support the notion that we should work toward the
betterment of life on earth.
Definition: Concept
Value
°Learned and unlearned reinforcers
°and aversive conditions.
In other words, most of us
find it reinforcing to know life will survive, especially animal life, more
especially human-animal life.
(In fact, hidden deep in our
value structure is usually a learned bias for the well-being of the human
animal that has the same skin color as ours, the same religion, the same
nationality, the same profession, and even the same special orientation within
that profession. But nowadays, many of us struggle to rise above such a narrow
bias, to embrace all humanity, or even all life.)
Some need to resort to enlightened
self-interest to justify their concern for nonhuman and plant life. For
example, they argue we must care about the survival of the varieties of species
in the Amazon rain forest because those species may ultimately help the
survival of humanity. Others argue we must care, even if their survival isn’t
in our self-interest. However, we’ve heard of few outside of
So we’re willing to admit
some arbitrariness about the ultimate goal of the well-being of life in the
universe. We’re just saying we’ve been brought up to value that, and we bet you
have, too. Here’s what B. F. Skinner said on a related theme. He said pity the
culture that doesn’t convince its young that its survival is of great value,
because that culture will be less likely to survive. We’re just expanding the
concept of culture a bit to include all life. If you find that too much of a
strain and want to reduce it to the well-being of humanity, you wouldn’t hurt
our feelings.
RULES, RESOURCES, AND CONTINGENCIES
Suppose you agree that our
ultimate value and goal should be something like the
well-being of life in the universe (perhaps with a special bias toward human
life on earth). How do we achieve it? Just letting human nature (the
direct-acting contingencies of reinforcement and punishment) take its course
ends in wars and rumors of wars, threats of nuclear annihilation, starvation,
pollution, destruction of our environment, crime, drugs, and on and on.
So, in self-defense, we may
need to provide guidance to our human nature, as wonderful and as horrible as
it is. We may need to design systems that guide humanity toward our ultimate
goal - the survival and well-being of life, including our human descendants. We
may need to use goal-directed systems design.
Goal-directed systems
design assumes that to achieve a
goal, you should state that goal and consciously design your systems to achieve
that goal. Systems are organizations - the United Nations, the
If a system is to do more
than float aimlessly through life, it needs a goal, an ultimate value. For
example, the goal of the United Nations might be the well-being of life in the
universe. Systems need resources to achieve their goals. For example,
the United Nations may need fruit, vegetables, grain, and agricultural
technology to prevent people from starving in some
The system must obtain each
of those components - the resources, rules, and contingencies. So all systems,
including the United Nations and you and your car, need subsystems. And those
subsystems must in turn have clear goals, such as the production of food for
the United Nations. And those subsystems also must in turn have resources,
rules, and contingencies. On and on, unto to the lowest level: Like who buys
the paper clips? Like whose turn is it to run over to the deli and pick up
sandwiches for the office staff?
Definition: Concept
Goal-directed systems
design
□ First you select the ultimate goal of a system,
□ then you select the various levels of intermediate goals needed to accomplish that ultimate goal,
□ and finally, you select the initial goals needed to accomplish those intermediate goals
As we will see next, legal
and moral control involves setting contingencies to get people to use the
world’s resources (everything from food and other people down to paper clips)
so as to contribute to the well-being of life in the universe. In other words,
we suggest that legal and moral control is, or at least should be, part of a
goal-directed systems design aimed toward the well-being of life in the
universe.
QUESTIONS
1. What do the
authors suggest is the purpose of life?
a. Why?
2. Give a few
examples of systems.
3. Goal-directed
systems design—define it and give a partial example.
a. Point out the role of resources, rules, and
contingencies.
CONTINGENCIES FOR FOLLOWING THE RULES OF GOOD RESOURCE USE
1. Do you
think religion is one of the most important aspects of people’s lives?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
2. Do you
think it’s important to understand the role religion plays in people’s lives?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
3. Do you
think it’s important to understand the role religion plays in people’s lives in
terms of the principles of behavior?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
Well, that’s what we’re
going to try to do in part of this chapter. But it ain’t
easy. What we are trying to do is understand how religion works from a
behavioral perspective; but, in no sense, do we mean to offend
anyone—Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Confuciusist,
Taoist, agnostic, or atheist.
Concept
LEGAL-RULE CONTROL
Don’t dump your toxic waste
here, buddy.
Goal: healthy life forms.
Resource: uncontaminated
environment.
Legal rule: Don’t
contaminate, or you’ll be fined.
Legal contingency: a fine —
analog to a penalty contingency — punishment by the loss of a reinforcer
(dollars).
EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
Analog to Penalty
This is an example of legal-rule control - the
use of added contingencies involving fines, jail, etc.
Definition: Concept
Legal Rule Control
Control by rules specifying added analogs to behavioral contingencies
and added direct-acting behavioral contingencies
based on material outcomes
Note that the legal
contingencies are added to the ineffective natural contingencies. Most often
the contingencies are analogs, though sometimes they’re direct acting (for
example, all curfew violators will be
shot on sight is direct acting).
Concept
MORAL (ETHICAL) RULE CONTROL
Ah, there ain’t nobody lookin’. So I’ll just
dump this hazardous waste over here and . . .
STOP!
What? Who’s that? Who said
that?
This is your conscience,
brother. Even when the cops aren’t around, I’m always here to keep you on the
straight and narrow.
Well, hee-hee, I was just kidding.
I wasn’t really gonna’ . . .
Definition: Concept
Moral (ethical) rule control
□ Control by rules specifying added analogs to behavioral contingencies.
□ Such rules specify social, religious, or supernatural outcomes.
This is moral-rule
control—the use of added contingencies involving excommunication, heaven,
hell, reincarnation into a lower caste, etc.
Note that the moral
contingencies are added to the ineffective natural contingencies. Sometimes
moral rules are supplemented with direct-acting physical outcomes (for example,
the time your mother boxed your ears when she heard you use the Lord’s name in
vain).
Come on, conscience, it’ll
cost a fortune to move all these barrels over to an authorized hazardous-waste
dump.
Brother, you dump it here
and you’ll be a polluter.
So?
Polluters are evil people
who don’t care about anything but the fast buck.
Well, for sure I don’t want
to be an evil person.
Brother, I knew you’d
choose the moral path.
But still, I’ve only got a
few barrels; and that won’t hurt much.
NO!
Why not, conscience, just a
few barrels?
Because God won’t like you.
There is no room in Heaven for polluters.
Are you sure, no room for
just one or two?
No room for even the little
toe of a single polluter. Never!
That’s heavy.
ANALYSIS
Yes, when you sin, the
outcomes are sizable and certain, even if they are delayed.
Goal: healthy life forms.
Resource: uncontaminated
environment.
Moral rule: Don’t
contaminate or you’ll experience God’s wrath.
Moral contingency: an
analogue to a penalty contingency—exclusion from Heaven or an analogue to a
punishment contingency—time in hell.
EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY: Analog to Penalty
This is another example of moral-rule
control—the use of added contingencies involving excommunication, heaven,
hell, etc.
We started out with this
contrived example, but we’ll end with some serious questions.
1. Do you think most of the world’s religions
(or at least yours) contain rules of conduct that are important for the proper
functioning and even the survival of society?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
2. Do you think those religions also contain
some sort of contingencies to support the following of those rules?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
3. Do you think our example of the polluter’s
struggle with her conscience is a good illustration of such a rule and such a
contingency?
a. yes
b. no
c. Why?
EXAMPLE OF MORAL-RULE CONTROL[3]
The hungry Yanomamo hunter goes into the Brazilian forest and bags a
monkey. Does he skin it, cook it, and eat it on the spot? No, he takes it back
to the village to share with others. Why? Because he believes that if he
doesn’t he will lose his hunting skills. In some hunting cultures, hunters even
insist that everyone else get a piece of meat before they do, again to avoid
losing their hunting skills.
This is an example of goals
and their needed resources, rules, and contingencies. The goal is the
nutritional support of the village. The resource is the scarce animal protein.
The rule is share it. The contingency is punishment by the loss of hunting
skills if you gobble it down all by yourself.
For another example, look
at the Ten Commandments; for instance: Thou shalt not
mess around with someone else’s husband or wife. The goal is the rearing of
children. The resource is the family. The rule is don’t endanger it with
hanky-panky. The contingency is punishment by the wrath of God, sometimes
supported by physical stoning by your friends and neighbors.
LEGAL VS. MORAL CONTROL
Usually legal control works
well as long as someone is around to observe the behavior and impose the
contingency. But often nobody’s lookin’ at
As we’ve seen, sometimes
moral control works when legal control fails. But the reverse also applies.
Sometimes legal control works when moral control fails:
Fellow citizens, you have a
moral obligation to your country to preserve our scarce resources during these
times of crisis. Therefore, to preserve our oil supplies, I ask that you not
exceed 55 mph.
Lots of luck.
Fellow citizens, we have a
new law in this great land of ours. Anyone caught exceeding 55 mph will get a
traffic ticket. Collect a few of those tickets, and you’ll need to dust off
your walking shoes, good buddy.
Fellow citizens, you have a
moral obligation to your babies and toddlers under four to secure them in an
infant or child restraint seat when driving.
Well, I meant to. Be
reasonable. I drive carefully. Who are you to tell me what to do? I know what’s
best for my child, don’t I?
Hear ye, hear ye, fellow
citizens. It is now a law of the land that all children under the age of four
must be buckled into an infant or child restraint seat.
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When Society Cares about an Outcome of a Behavior |
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And the behavior is |
Society uses |
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Observable |
Legal control |
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Not observable |
Moral Control |
If society can’t observe the
behavior or its outcomes, it doesn’t have much choice but to use moral control.
For example, impure thoughts are not illegal, just immoral. If society can
observe the behavior and cares about the outcome, it uses legal control. For
example, letting your parking meter expire won’t cause you to go to confession,
but it might cost you a buck or two. If sometimes society can observe the
undesirable behavior and sometimes it can’t, then society often uses both moral
and legal control. For example, stealing may send you both to the confessional and
to jail.
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF MORAL CONTROL
Moral Control Is Hard to
Establish and Maintain.
For example, to establish
and maintain something that even approximates moral control, the Jewish culture
needs the Old Testament and the Christian culture needs both the Old and New
Testaments. These cultures also need the continuous efforts of the rabbis with
their synagogues and the priests and ministers with their churches.
Religion battles eternally
with harmful direct-acting contingencies—those that lead to the misuse of
resources (often human resources), direct-acting contingencies that will
destroy the temple of our bodies—drugs of a rapidly increasing variety, from
caffeine and nicotine through alcohol and on to crack. Religion battles
eternally to prevent the powerful from exploiting the powerless (except when a
representative of religion has been bought by the powerful; then religion’s
function reverses).
Moral control is hard and
costly to establish, hard and costly to maintain, and often fails. But when no
one else is looking but you and your conscience or you and your God, moral
control earns its keep. The world would be in an even greater mess if we didn’t
have these moral contingencies.
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF LEGAL CONTROL
For moral control to work,
the social system must establish a special learned aversive condition—the
thought of the wrath of God or the thought of the wrath of your parents. And
those thoughts must be aversive, even when no one’s looking. Such an effective
aversive condition is hard to establish and hard to maintain.
Getting people to memorize
the specific commandments or rules is easy. The hard part is putting teeth in
the bite of those commandments. The hard part is arranging learned aversive
outcomes for noncompliance with those rules. Don’t be selfish. That’s
easy for people to memorize. If you are selfish, you will be no more likely
to pass through Heaven’s gates than would a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle. Getting people to accept that rule is the hard part, especially
when being selfish generates so many sizable, probable reinforcers.
Sometimes it’s easier to
establish legal control because it’s fairly easy to establish the fear of legal
outcomes as learned aversive conditions: Steal this, buster, and we’re throwing
your rear in jail. Children needn’t go to Sunday school for 6 years to
establish the possibility of jail as an aversive condition. And the parents
needn’t go to church the rest of their lives to maintain the possibility of
jail as an aversive condition. As long as jail is a highly probable outcome,
rules involving it control behavior well. Of course, it all falls apart when
jail is improbable.
However, there’s a
tradeoff. True, it takes most of the efforts of organized religion to establish
and maintain our sensitivity to the reinforcing and aversive values of
religious outcomes. But all it takes is God or our conscience to monitor
compliance with those moral rules, once religion has established a conscience or
a belief in God. And we needn’t pay taxes to support God or our conscience
(though we must financially support religion’s efforts to maintain our
sensitivity to the reinforcers and aversive
conditions associated with religious moral rules).
But we do pay heavy taxes
to support the police and the judges. Also it may not cost us much to establish
the thought of jail as an aversive condition, but the jails and prisons
themselves add a heavy tax burden. By contrast, we don’t have to pay taxes for
the maintenance of Heaven and hell; we just have to support religion’s efforts
to establish and maintain our belief in them.
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Drawbacks |
Benefits |
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Moral Control |
Aversive control is hard
to establish and maintain. |
Easy for God to monitor compliance
with moral rules. |
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Legal Control |
Expensive to monitor
compliance with rules. Getting caught is often
improbable |
Easy to establish jail as
an aversive condition. |
RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLE’S VIEWS
We have three different but
overlapping groups of readers for this book—believers, atheists, agnostics, and
behaviorists; some behaviorists are believers and some are atheists or
agnostics. We want to remain friends with all of them.
We have the greatest
respect for and appreciation of religion. In no way are we criticizing
organized religion. We are simply analyzing one of the crucial contributions of
organized religion. We are trying to understand the contribution of religion to
the material well-being of humanity; others have written more effectively than
we could about the contribution of religion to the spiritual well-being of
humanity. Some of our best students think we should not include an analysis of
the behavioral processes underlying the material contributions of religion; other
of our best students think this is the most important part of our book. It ain’t easy; but we’re doing our best to keep everyone happy
without shirking our responsibilities to point out this important intersection
between behavior analysis and religion[4].
On the one hand, we are not
challenging traditional views of Jesus, God, the devil, Heaven, and hell. On
the other hand, we are not endorsing them. Challenging or endorsing these views
is not the point of this chapter. We are simply looking at part of the profound
impact these religious views have on humanity. And we are simply trying to
understand the psychological (behavioral) processes through which these views
have their impact.
Also, some behaviorists may
be suspicious of our use of the mentalistic term conscience.
We may seem to be losing touch with our behavioristic
base. No. We just mean self-observation, self-evaluation, and rule control.
We’re using poetic license only to keep things flowing. Just consider us to be
scientists trying to get across complex concepts and analyses without putting
our readers to sleep.
THE AVERSIVE BASIS OF MORAL AND LEGAL CONTROL[5]
THE MODEL OF RELIGIOUS CONTROL.
We should note that the
contingencies described in this chapter are generalized forms of moral and legal
control and that cultures vary in the specifics of moral control. The use of
heaven and hell as a form of moral control comes from Judeo-Christian
traditions. And we write within this context because most of the readers of
this text are familiar with the concepts of Heaven and hell. However, in some
cases, aspects of moral control may be more complex and subtle than we indicate
here. Even agnostics and atheists are affected by the moral contingencies in
their cultures. Although they may not believe their behavior has religious
consequences, their morality is usually similar to that of their religious
peers. Agnostics and atheists refrain from stealing, lying, killing, etc., just
as the religious do.
WHY DO WE NEED HELL TO HAVE MORAL CONTROL?
Why aren’t the promises of
Heaven enough to produce moral behavior from believers? Why do we need the
threat of hell, as well? Why must aversive control play such a large role in
our moral contingencies?
To be functional, it may help
that religion invokes the threat of hell. Here’s the problem with using
rule-governed analogs to reinforcement based on the promise of rewards in an
afterlife such as access to Heaven. Procrastination! We can always postpone
that difficult walk on the razor’s edge that leads to Heaven. We can always sin
today and struggle up the straight, narrow, and steep road to Heaven tomorrow,
or maybe the day after tomorrow. But rule-governed analogs to punishment and
avoidance often control our behavior more reliably than rule-governed analogs
to reinforcement. Why? Because they don’t let us procrastinate our lives away
in sin.
For example, this rule
won’t control our behavior very well: Perform many good deeds and you will
spend eternity in Heaven. Why not? Because the statement of that rule does
not make noncompliance a very aversive condition. It allows us to cop out and
procrastinate. It allows us to say, I am too busy to perform any good deeds
right now, but I will perform them when I get time. This is an ineffective
rule-governed analog to reinforcement by the presentation of a reinforcer.
INEFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
ANALOG TO REINFORCEMENT BY THE PRESENTATION OF A
REINFORCER
But what about this rule?
Commit a single mortal sin and you will definitely spend eternity in hell. The
statement of that rule does make noncompliance a most aversive condition (for
believers). This is an effective rule-governed analog to punishment.
EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
ANALOG TO PUNISHMENT
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF HEAVEN IN MORAL CONTROL?
But, you might say, moral
control isn’t all that aversive. People think of Heaven as an afterlife rich
with reinforcers. We would agree that Heaven, rich
with reinforcers, is crucial to moral control, but
not because Heaven is the end result of procrastination-tolerating
reinforcement contingencies.
Then what role does Heaven
play in supporting our moral behavior? Heaven gives us something to lose! If
you do too many evil deeds (sins of commission), you will not get the reinforcers of Heaven (a rule-governed analog to punishment
by the prevention of the presentation of reinforcers).
And if you fail to do enough good deeds (sins of omission), you also will not
get the reinforcers of Heaven (a rule-governed analog
to avoidance of the loss of reinforcers). And with
analogues to avoidance come the deadlines that battle procrastination.
For example, at one time,
parents instructed their children to perform the following prayer: If I
should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. The parents said
or implied to their children something like this: Say your prayers every night
before you go to bed (deadline); so you will avoid harm to your soul, should
you die before you wake.
A similar precautionary
rule might be: Always do good deeds every day (deadline) to ensure the
salvation of your soul, because you never know when you may die. But this
is similar to the analogue to reinforcement contingency we discussed earlier;
so why would this analogue to avoidance contingency control behavior when the
simple instruction to perform many good deeds, analogue to reinforcement,
wouldn’t? Because the daily-deed rule contains a deadline.
EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
ANALOG TO AVOIDANCE OF THE LOSS OF
THE
Deadlines that fight
procrastination may also be established in other ways. When an opportunity to
do a good deed is presented to a person, it sets up a deadline for doing that
good deed. For example, if you’re driving along the highway at night and you
see a stranded motorist, you have the opportunity to help that motorist and
thus to avoid losing the opportunity to enter heaven when you die. But that
opportunity has a deadline. You need to help the motorist now. If you come back
next week to help the motorist, it will be too late - the motorist will be gone
and you will have lost that opportunity to enter Heaven.
EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY:
ANALOG TO AVOIDANCE OF THE LOSS OF A THE
So moral rules control sins
of commission (committing bad deeds), when they’re stated as analogs to punishment.
And they control sins of omission (omitting or failing to do good deeds), when
they’re stated as analogs to avoidance.
So, as near as we can tell,
moral control that benefits the well-being of humanity is exclusively, or
almost exclusively, aversive control. In the case of religion, that aversive
control uses rule-governed analogs to punishment and avoidance. Hell (or
something like it) is the aversive condition to be presented, and Heaven (or
something like it) is the paradise to be lost.[6]
Now you may say these two
previous examples are a little extreme; and you may be right. We have
simplified the moral rules to make the underlying processes a clearer. Sure,
most people don’t really think they’ve lost their shot at heaven if the fail to
do a good dead for just one day, or maybe for a whole week. But I’ll bet there
are many good people who do believe a rule almost this extreme, and I’ll bet
they knock off a lot more good deeds during their lifetime than do those with a
more flexible morality.
Also, I’ll bet you do feel
a little guilty, every time you pass a stranded motorist or are too busy to
help someone in need, even though you may not have heard the click of the latch
on heaven’s gate. Our moral control is a little more subtle than I’ve indicated
in these examples but not much more subtle.
WHAT ABOUT SECULAR HUMANISM?
Sid’s Seminar
Joe: I’m into secular humanism.
Tom: What’s that?
Joe: Humanists care about the well-being of
humanity. Secular means “not religious.” So we say secular humanism
to make it clear that we don’t use the concepts of Heaven and hell. We believe
in and care about only the well-being of human beings or maybe even the
well-being of life in the universe, in the here and now.
Eve: Interesting.
Joe: Here’s one of the best features of secular
humanism: We get away from aversive control. No threats of hell. No threats of
the loss of Heaven.
Sid: As I understand it, secular humanism supports
pretty much the same sorts of moral rules as do most formal religions.
Joe: Yes, sir. Except the rules don’t describe
aversive contingencies. The rules describe analogs to contingencies of
reinforcement.
Eve: How can that be? We were just reading that
analogs to reinforcement don’t work too well with moral control.
Joe: Well, I’ve never really thought about it before.
Eve: What’s the reinforcer in your analogs to
reinforcement?
Joe: The well-being of life in the universe, in the
here and now.
Tom: For example?
Joe: If you send $20 to Greenpeace, you’ll be helping
to save the whales.
Tom: What happens if you don’t contribute?
Joe: The whales aren’t as well off.
Eve: Joe, that sounds like an analog to an avoidance
contingency to me. Like sending the $20 helps to avoid the aversive outcome of
losing another whale to the whaling industry. The only problem with this
contingency is that it may allow too much procrastination, because there’s no
clear deadline; so the humanist may set aside the solicitation letter and
envelope, meaning to send in a check tomorrow, only to find that a year later
the solicitation material still sits unanswered, buried under an accumulated
stack of other procrastinated tasks.
INEFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE-MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY: ANALOG
TO ESCAPE
Max: And that may be a problem with secular humanism.
It doesn’t matter when you send in our $20, because it will always save a
whale, more or less. So you never get around to it.
Joe: Yes, it’s hard. You have to supply your own
supplementary rule and deadline. You must say to yourself, if I don’t send
in the check right now, I will probably forget to; so right now
becomes an effective deadline. You must create your own theoretical,
direct-acting escape contingency.
EFFECTIVE INFERRED, DIRECT-ACTING CONTINGENCY: ESCAPE
Max: And that may be a problem with this sort of
secular voluntarism. It requires a very rare sort of behavioral history that
will cause a person to generate and be controlled by such an
anti-procrastination rule.
Joe: Yeah, and I’ve also got to be the sort of person
who feels guilty for not doing my little bit to save the whales. Aversive
control even here.
Tom: So you admit your secular humanism is as much
involved with aversive control as is organized religion?
Joe: I’ll admit it’s beginning to look as if all moral
control is based on aversive contingencies, regardless of whether the control
is religious or secular.
WHAT ABOUT LEGAL CONTROL?
Sid’s Seminar
Tom: I’m not sure about the value of Joe’s secular humanism.
What I am sure about is the value of law and order. Is that based on aversive
control, too?
Joe: You’ve got to be kidding. Law and order bristles
with aversive control.
Max: It sure does. That’s why many behavior analysts
have criticized traditional legal systems because they emphasize aversive
control and downplay reinforcement by the presentation of reinforcers.
Tom: What else could they do?
Max: Instead of penalizing illegal behavior, they
could reinforce legal behavior.
Tom: How?
Max: Instead of giving speeding tickets backed with
fines, they could give safe-driving awards backed with cash prizes.
Tom: That’s a great idea.
Joe: Except for a couple of problems: First, taxpayers
are already revolting, and the budget of our overworked legal system is already
straining. Can you imagine the state police agreeing to sell 10 patrol cars and
lay off 20 traffic officers to finance cash prizes for safe driving?
Sue: And if you made reinforcement intermittent enough
to be practical, it would be too intermittent to maintain safe driving.
Joe: That’s related to my second point: It’s not clear
that would be a reinforcement procedure anyhow. It may be more like an analog
to punishment by the prevention of the presentation of a reinforcer.
Tom: What do you mean?
Joe: Like speeding results in the prevention of a low
probability event—the presentation of a cash prize. But the speeder can say, I
probably won’t get the award anyway, so I might as well speed because, for
sure, speeding will get me home quicker.
Eve: So whenever you have laws to prevent behavior,
like speeding or stealing, they’re going to involve some sort of punishment
contingency or its analog.
Tom: What about laws to encourage behavior—like laws
to encourage citizens to pay their taxes on time? Couldn’t you give a bonus to
everyone who paid his or her taxes on time?
Joe: First, to pay for it you’d have to increase
everyone’s taxes; so that’s sneaky from the start. And second, you’ve got a
deadline—April 15. And deadlines mean aversive control. It’s an analog to
avoidance of the prevention of the presentation of a reinforcer.
Tom: Huh?
Joe: You’d beat the deadline to avoid preventing the
tax man from presenting you with your bonus.
Sue: More aversive control.
Sid: Let me butt in with this summary, otherwise the
transcript of this seminar will get too long.
SID’S SUMMARY
1. Immoral behavior and illegal behavior don’t
differ fundamentally. Both usually interfere with achieving our ultimate
goal—the well-being of life in the universe. In one way or another, both
usually involve a failure to follow the rules for proper uses of resources
needed for life’s well-being.
2. Society must add both moral and legal
contingencies to counteract the natural contingencies of reinforcement and punishment
that support immoral and illegal behavior.
3. Both moral and legal contingencies are
usually indirect-acting analog contingencies. So they control behavior only
when they are expressed as moral and legal rules.
4. Though immoral and illegal behavior don’t
differ fundamentally, in practice it’s harder to observe some behaviors than
others.
5. Generally, society adds moral analog
contingencies to control behavior that’s harder to observe and legal analog
contingencies to control behaviors that are easier to observe. So behavior we
call immoral is usually harder to observe directly, and behavior we call
illegal is usually easier to observe.
6. Sometimes we combine moral and legal
contingencies, especially when we can sometimes observe and sometimes not
observe the same class of behavior.
7. Moral analog contingencies usually have
outcomes that don’t materially affect the individual who is behaving. For moral
analog contingencies based on religion, the outcomes are supernatural or
spiritual, not material. For moral analog contingencies based on secular
humanism, the outcomes for the behaving person are social—the well-being of
others.
8. Legal analog contingencies usually have
material outcomes (for example, penalties or imprisonment).
9. Moral and legal rules describe both behaviors
that should occur and those that shouldn’t.
10. Rules describing analogs to punishment and
penalty contingencies suppress behaviors that shouldn’t occur. Rules describing
analogs to avoidance support behaviors that should occur.
11. In most cases it seems necessary that the moral
and legal analog contingencies be based on aversive control.
QUESTIONS
Note the contingencies in
this section are there only as an explanatory aid. You do not need to memorize
them to do well on this quiz.
1. Legal-rule control - define it and
give an example, including the contingency.
2. Moral (ethical) rule control - define
it and give an example, including the contingency.
3. When do you need moral control? Give an
example.
4. When do you need legal control? Give an
example.
5. What is the function of Heaven and hell in
supporting moral behavior?
a. What role does procrastination play? Give
an example.
b. Some argue that promises of Heaven control
moral behavior through analogs to reinforcement, with Heaven being the
reinforcer. In terms of rule control, why is this an inadequate explanation?
Give an example. Explain this in terms of establishing operations.
c. In terms of rule control, why do threats
of hell work? What role do analogs to punishment play? Explain this in terms of
establishing operations. Give an example.
d. What role do analogs to avoidance of hell
play? Explain this in terms of establishing operations. Give an example.
6. According to the authors, what is the
function of Heaven in terms of
a. reducing sins of commission (committing
bad deeds)?
b. reducing sins of omission (omitting or
failing to do good deeds)?
7. What’s the relative role of aversive control
versus reinforcement by the presentation of reinforcers
in secular humanism?
8. What’s the relative role of aversive control
versus reinforcement by the presentation of reinforcers
in the legal system?
a. Using examples, explain your answer for
laws designed to decrease behavior.
b. Using examples, explain your answer for
laws designed to increase behavior.
WHY DO MORAL AND LEGAL CONTROL FAIL?
Our world would be in an
even bigger mess than it is now, if we didn’t have moral and legal control. But
one reason we are now in such a mess is that moral and legal control often
fail. Why? Why do moral and legal rules describing contingencies that are not
direct acting sometimes fail to control our behavior? There are several
reasons.
Often, for legal rules, the
penalty for each act is too improbable (for example, you probably won’t get
caught speeding during the next minute). Often, with religious rules, the
penalty for each act is too small. This could occur because the person
rationalizes an exemption from the rule or doesn’t believe it in the first
place (for example, It says you’re not supposed to kill, but God didn’t mean
in times of national emergency, or I’m not so sure a God exists anyway,
so why shouldn’t I steal a few dollars?).
(By failure of moral or religious
control, we mean failure of moral rules, such as the Ten Commandments, to
control our behavior. We don’t mean failure to get people to profess a belief
in religion. For example, there are many more people who claim to be Christians
than who consistently practice the teachings of Christ.)
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Why Do Legal and Moral
Control Fail? |
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Moral Control |
Penalty too small |
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Legal Control |
Penalty too improbable |
QUESTION
1. Give two reasons for why moral and legal control
often fail, and give an example for each reason.
Example
APPLICATIONS OF ETHICAL (MORAL) AND LEGAL CONTROL
One way to evaluate the
health of a culture is in terms of the well-being of its most wealthy and
powerful. But, of course, the well-being of the wealthy and powerful is assured
in all cultures except those breathing their last breath. Even the well-being
of the average members or of the middle-class members may not reflect our most
strict standards for the health of a culture. Perhaps our most strict standards
are found in measures of the well-being of the poorest and most powerless in a
culture - those not in position to demand good treatment.
Who are the poorest and
most powerless in almost any culture?
The children, the mentally handicapped, those labeled mentally ill, and the
prisoners. These people are often not in a position to demand their share of
society’s resources. And they are not often in a position to demand that we
reduce the aversive conditions of their lives. So the culture that helps the
helpless may meet our strictest standards of health.
Now who are these infants
whose deaths add to the mortality statistics? The children of the rich and
powerful or of the middle-class? Of course not. These horrible statistics come
from the dying children of the poor and powerless. And, as we must care for the
well-being of the children of the poor and powerless, so also must we care for
the well-being of the mentally handicapped, those labeled mentally ill, and
prisoners.
We’re pleased to live in a society where so much good
work is being done to protect and even improve the well-being of these poor and
powerless. Such folks are much better off than they would have been in previous
centuries. And they’re much better off than they are in other countries. For
example, in the
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INTERVENTIONS
THE RIGHT TO EFFECTIVE INTERVENTION (TREATMENT)
In Chapter 4, we discussed the
right to effective interventions. Most people agree that everyone has a right
to help with his or her problems—at least as long as we talk in generalities.
But many people disagree when we get down to the nitty-gritty.
And the nitty-gritty has
become especially nitty and gritty now that the
powerless have not only a moral but also a legal right to effective
interventions rather than just custodial maintenance. This is especially true
now that for the first time in the history of human services, we have effective
interventions that can at least help most of these unfortunate people, even if
those interventions can’t solve all their problems. And those interventions are
generally behavioral interventions. Before behavior analysis, custodial care
was often the best anyone could do. But that’s not true anymore. Generally, a
right to effective intervention now means a right to behavioral intervention,
though many would argue the data are not all in on that one.
Goal: physically and
behaviorally healthy life forms.
Resources: powerless
people.
Legal rule: Provide the
powerless with effective repertoire-improving interventions or suffer legal
penalties.
Nitty-gritty #1: When, if
ever, should we use aversive control?
Perhaps the use of aversive
control is the most debated moral and legal nitty-gritty in the field of
behavior analysis. We have reviewed much of that debate earlier, in Chapters 4,
6, and 7. Chapter 20 also contains a section comparing and contrasting various
ways to reduce undesirable behavior.
A glance at humanity’s
history may suggest why people often resist the use of aversive control. We can
almost view the history of humanity as the history of the misuse of aversive
control. It’s the history of the powerful using aversive control to redistribute
the resources of the less powerful. And though the powerful may redistribute
those resources in the name of the well-being of humanity, somehow a
disproportionate share of those resources ends in the possession of the
redistributors. In other words, it’s easy to guess which portion of humanity
has had its well-being improved. (If you don’t think so, ask the original North
Americans, or the indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Amazon, or the indigenous
peoples of any currently developing country. They’ve all been ripped off and
are continuing to be ripped off.)
So we shouldn’t be
surprised that many good people question the use of aversive control,
especially in interventions with the most powerless - children, the mentally
handicapped, those labeled mentally ill, and prisoners. Aversive control can be
an effective technique, perhaps one that should even be demanded in the name of
the right to effective intervention; but it is as subject to abuse in
institutions for the powerless as it is on a national or international level.
This means that we need all
sorts of moral and legal rules and enforcers of those rules to make sure that
even people of goodwill use aversive behavioral interventions for the
well-being of the client, and that they don’t use aversive control for their
convenience. Our use of aversive control must always truly be for effective
intervention and the well-being of our clients..
NITTY-GRITTY #2: WHO GETS THE RESOURCES?
We never have enough resources;
for example, we don’t have enough behavior analysts. About half of us behavior
analysts work with the developmentally disabled. But what about the
undereducated poor folks? What about the high percentage of college dropouts?
What about the thousands and thousands of people in the United States who are
dying because of obesity-related problems?
NITTY-GRITTY #3: WHO SHOULD CHANGE, THE INDIVIDUAL OR
SOCIETY?
Should Sid have helped
Bobbie (the transgender student) change to meet society’s standards, or should
he have helped society change to meet Bobbie’s standards (Chapter 1)? Should
behavior analysts work to make prisons more effective in their efforts to help
the prisoners become productive, useful, law-abiding citizens? Or should
behavior analysts recognize that poverty is the major correlate of street
crime; and should they work toward changing a society so it will do what it
takes to eliminate poverty? Or suppose the behavior analyst has an adult who
argues that he or she prefers the love of little children to adults and that
this is normal and healthy for both parties. Does the behavior analyst work to
change what society would call a child molester, or does the behavior analyst
work toward changing what the accused would call a repressive society? How do
you decide, other than in terms of your culturally programmed biases?
NITTY-GRITTY #4: WHO DECIDES?
Who decides the tricky
issues - the behavior analyst, the client, the person paying the tab? How do we
work for the well-being of the client or society rather than the well-being of
those with their hands on the purse strings?
RESEARCH
Life is full of conflicting
interests. In research, we have the interests of a society that can benefit from
scientific knowledge, the scientists whose careers can benefit from their
contributions to that knowledge, and the participants who may benefit, be
unaffected, or be harmed by this quest for knowledge.
And no one is above the
need for moral and legal guidance. We scientists are no better than candidates
for the President of the
Fortunately, in recent
years, society has given us some help—human-subjects review boards and animal-welfare
review boards. Such boards review human and animal research to ensure that
the well-being of the participants is properly considered. Furthermore, most
scientific groups look out for the well-being of society in that they monitor
the accuracy of the data their members report. A scientist who commits the sin
of cheating, of presenting false data, loses his or her credentials as a
scientist and ends up selling used cars. This doesn’t happen often; but when it
does, the lightning bolts are unleashed.
QUESTIONS
1. Who are the poorest and most powerless in
almost every culture?
2. What may suggest why people resist the use of
aversive control?
a. Explain and illustrate.
3. List and illustrate four nitty-gritty
concerns we must consider in pursuing the right to effective intervention.
4. Whose interests may be in conflict in
scientific research?
a. What is done to protect the participants’
interests?
INTERMEDIATE ENRICHMENT
Controversy
transgenderism : a case study of moral and legal
control[7]
As we mentioned at the end of Chapter 1, a few people were concerned
about our treatment of transgenderism (previously
called transexuality) in the second edition of
this book. So, we decided to eliminate it from subsequent editions. But almost
all of my students thought it was too important to eliminate, as did most of
the faculty I checked with. So then I asked an old friend of mine I’ve know
since I was three years old. He is gay. I asked him what I should do. He
described the isolation, agony, and suicide tendencies of homosexual and gay
men he had known and who had sought counseling from him - problems resulting
from society’s oppressiveness. Then he said these issues of sexuality are too
important to ignore. He advised me to keep Bobbie’s case in but to discuss its
implications more fully and to face the issues directly. We’re following his
advice; this section consists of the fuller discussion of the issues and
implications.
Regardless of your sexual orientation and your sophistication in these
matters, you may find some parts of this particular behavioral interpretation
challenging to your current views and perhaps upsetting. Our advise is to stay
loose; don’t get too defensive of your current, long-held, long-cherished
views, or your recently acquired views. On the other hand, don’t jump on this
particular behavioral bandwagon, without considerable thought (not all
behaviorists agree with all of our analysis). Keep thinking about it, and see what
you conclude by the end of the book.
Although sexual orientation is an important issue in its own right, it
is only one of many important issues, though among the most controversial we
have considered. But sexual orientation is also important because it’s sort of
a model issue, and our analysis of sexual orientation is sort of a model
analysis, one we might apply to many other complex issues, such as the nature
of sex roles more generally, “intelligence,” “personality,” “mental illness,”
“autism,” “criminality,” poverty and society. In other words, an analysis of
sexual orientation also gives us a chance to illustrate a behavioral word view,
though not the only behavioral world view.
THE QUESTION
What’s the basis of our sexual
orientation? Is it learned or is it biologically determined? By biologically
determined, I mean unlearned, innate, inherited, genetic, or prenatal.
(I will often use innate in a general, colloquial sense to mean biologically, prenatally
determined, without necessarily suggesting a genetic, inherited basis.)
So the question is, is our
sexual orientation learned or innate? Is our sexual orientation a result of our
behavioral history and the current behavioral contingencies, or is it
biologically determined? To more precise, are the differences between
people’s sexual orient biologically determined or learned? It’s important be
clear that we’re talking about the differences in the sexual orientation
between different people, not our sexuality, itself; because, of course,
biology underlies every breath we take, ever lever we press. But whether one
person presses the left lever and another presses the right lever may be
exclusively a result of the differences in their past contingencies of
reinforcement and reflect no differences in their underlying biology.
Similarly, it is meaningful to ask whether the differences between your
gender behavior and mine are learned or innate (biologically determined), even
though biology underlies all of our behaviors. So the common reply that it is
both learned and innate may just be an intellectual cop out that fails to
distinguish between the question of whether there’s a biological basis of all
our behavior and whether there’s a biological basis for individual differences
of some sorts of behaviors, such as gender behavior.
Incidentally, when we
suggest our sexual orientation may be learned, we don’t mean to imply that
someone intentionally taught it to us. Bobbie’s parents did not intentionally
teach him to be a transgender person; but, nonetheless, the accidental
contingencies and accidental pairings may have.
And now, let’s begin.
Usually people talk about
being heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, or
bisexual; but that may be painting with too wide a brush. It may help if we
analyze sexual orientation
into four components:
} Sexual values (i.e., reinforcers & aversive conditions)
} Sexually reinforced behavior
} Sex-style (gender) behavior
} Source of sexual reinforcers
Is the behavior that produces
sexual reinforcers
learned or innate?
Generally, in behavior
analysis, we find it most useful to consider the behavior that produces a
reinforcer to be fairly arbitrary. The reinforcer, not the behavior, is what’s
inherently important. Here’s one of the best examples of the arbitrariness of
behavior - imprinting. As we saw in Chapter 11, in the typical environment, the
chick gets the imprinted reinforcer (a bigger or better or clearer sight of
Mom) by making the response of approaching Mom. But laboratory demonstrations
show that any old response will do, as long as it produces a closer Mom (the
reinforcer). The chick will peck a response key, if that peck will produce the
reinforcer (a closer Mom). In one amazing experiment, using an especially contrived
apparatus, the chick had to walk away from Mom in order to get nearer to her.
And of course, the chick learned walking away, instead of the more typical
learned response of walking toward Mom. But the chicks easily learned this
counterintuitive response.
Is gender behavior learned or
innate?
Gender behavior is behavior or style typically associate with a
particular gender or sex (e.g., style of walking, talking, paying, working, and
dressing). I argue that gender behavior is arbitrary; and what gender behavior
is learned depends on what behavior is reinforced. According to the actual,
published case study our fictional story was based, Bobbie’s mother wanted a
little girl, but she got Bobby, a little boy, instead. Though we don’t have the
details of Bobby’s history, in one case, during the crucial preschool years,
the mother found it cute when the child dressed up in mommy’s clothes and put
block in his shoes, so he could have high-healed shoes too, just like mommy. It
seems plausible that Bobbie’s mother not only tolerated but also accidentally
reinforced his female gender behaviors. What you get is what you reinforce,
ready or not. This interpretation is even more plausible, because we’ve seen
that when Bobbie worked with Sid and Dawn, he could learn to sit, walk, and
even talk in a traditional male style rather than in the traditional female
style he had previously learned.
In addition, many people
who consider themselves gay or lesbian behave in a style typical of their
biological gender. And many others switch between “female” and “male” gender
behavior, depending on the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment
operating at the moment. All of this suggests that gender behavior is arbitrary
and learned, depending on the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment.
Contrary to popular belief, I’m suggesting there is nothing inherent in being
male or female that determines much of our gender behavior.
However, most of us
would find it impossible to change our gender behavior from “female” to “male”
or vice versa. Just as, for a long time, Bobbie found it impossible to perform
typical male-gender behavior. And because of that difficulty, we assume our
style is innate. But most of us would also find it impossible to speak Spanish
without sounding like a gringo. And, yet, because of that difficulty, we would not
assume our gringo accent is innate; instead, it was just learned so well while
we were children that we can’t get around it. The same goes for gender
behavior.
Is the reinforcing value of sexual
stimulation
learned or unlearned (innate)?
What about direct physical
stimulation of the erogenous zones? The physical stimulation itself is probably
an unlearned reinforcer. No one has to pair M&Ms with erogenous stimulation
for that stimulation to be reinforcing.
Is the reinforcing and
punishing value of different sources of sexual stimulation learned or unlearned
(innate)?
But what about the source
of that stimulation - whether it’s a man, a woman, or an inanimate object?
Well, in the dark, all cats look gray; if you don’t know, it can’t matter.
However, in the light, when you do know, it’s crucial. Sexual stimulation by
the wrong person, a person of the wrong sex, or a disgusting object may have
such a larger aversive component that it overwhelms the reinforcer component.
So what about this aversiveness of sexual stimuli when paired with certain
visual stimuli (such as the wrong person, a person of the wrong sex, or a
disgusting object)? Surely this conditional aversiveness
is learned. Though we know of no such experiment, suppose every time you were
sexually stimulated in the presence of a red light, you were also shocked; and
suppose sexual stimulation in the presence of the green light had no shock
paired with it.
NEUTRAL STIMULUS AVERSIVE CONDITION
No doubt, the pairing of
the conditional stimulus (sexual stimulation and the red light) with the
aversive stimulus (shock) would cause that conditional stimulus to become
aversive.
Now, for most of us, such
conditional aversiveness may not be acquired through
direct pairings of this sort. Instead, like so many of our values, it is
probably acquired through a verbal analog to pairing, for example other
people’s comments about how inappropriate (immoral, disgusting) certain sources
of sexual stimulation are.
NEUTRAL STIMULUS AVERSIVE CONDITION
While there is no experiment
just like the one we described, there is some relevant experimental research. A
group of male rats were raised from birth without contact with females. These
rats acquired the sexually reinforced behavior of mounting their male
companions. And, as adults, they would then mount males more frequently than
females. Again, this is not to say most of the sexual values of human beings
result from such direct pairing. It is to say that the conditional reinforcing
value can result from our learning history rather than our biological
inheritance.
other data suggesting our
innate sexual flexibility
} The bonobos (pigmy chimps, of the equatorial forests of central and west Africa) are vigorously bisexual. They appear to be our closest relatives, sharing more than 98% of our genetic profile, making “it as close to a human as, say, a fox is to a dog.” [8]
} Historically, homosexuality has commanded much interest and attention. Attitudes toward such preference have varied in different epochs and among diverse cultural and subcultural groups, ranging from acceptance (as among the ancient Greeks), to measured tolerance (in Roman times), to outright condemnation. During modern times ambivalent attitudes have prevailed.
} Of 76 societies studied by the American anthropologist Clellan Ford and the psychobiologist Frank A. Beach, two-thirds consider homosexual activities normal and socially acceptable.
} In
some societies, such as the Arunta (Aranda) of central
} Some
nations, such as
} One-third of the societies studied by Ford and Beach, including those of many industrialized countries, give little or no sanction to homosexuality, its practice often leading to long-term imprisonment. In many countries, it can at the very least result in job loss, housing discrimination, government blacklisting, and social ostracism.
} In recent years in the United States such organizations as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the Legal Defense and Education Fund (LAMBDA), and numerous regional and church-related groups have worked to influence public opinion and legislation toward acceptance of gays and lesbians.[9]
All of this suggests to me
that we are born bisexual or even multisexual. It is
only through our behavioral history that we become more focused in our sexual
behavior and our preferences for specific sources of sexual stimulation.
To further explain how
deeply ingrained some of our learned reinforcers are,
it helps to look at other sources of learned reinforcers.
It’s hard for most of us to imagine eating insects, even harder to imagine enjoying
the taste and the experience. Food is an unlearned reinforcer, but the form of
the food is a learned reinforcer. When Baby is hungry and Baby is given a
grilled cheese sandwich (or Big Mac, or hot dog), the taste, smell, and texture
of the grilled cheese sandwich are paired with the reduction of hunger and the
grilled cheese sandwich becomes a learned reinforcer.
NEUTRAL STIMULUS REINFORCER
In a similar manner,
insects become reinforcing to hungry children in other cultures, when they are
given insects to eat. Now those of us who may not have acquired the learned
reinforcing value of insects might think “ugh! Insects are disgusting and full
of germs,” but to those for whom the taste, smell and texture of insects have
become learned reinforcers - those insects have
become the equivalent to a grilled cheese sandwich.
NEUTRAL STIMULUS REINFORCER
The European and American
rejection of insects as food has little to do with insects as disease carriers
or their association with dirt and filth. The reason we don’t eat them is not
that they are dirty and loathsome; rather, they seem dirty and loathsome
because we don’t eat them.
Why then, don’t insects
remain neutral stimuli when they don’t become learned reinforcers.
Why do they become learned aversive conditions? Because there are many verbal
analogues to the pairing procedure that change the previously neutral insect
into aversive stimuli. The words (such as “ugh,” “gross,” and “ick”) that Mom says about insects are learned aversive
conditions to Baby. Therefore, the bugs also become learned aversive
conditions.
NEUTRAL STIMULUS AVERSIVE CONDITION
So not only are the stimuli
produced from eating insects not established as learned reinforcers,
but insects in general are learned aversive conditions.
There are many different
foods around the world that become learned aversive conditions in some places
but not in other places due to verbal analogues to pairing procedures. Horses,
dogs, and cats are aversive to eat in
What’s the point? Just
because something seems like a powerful reinforcer (for example, sexual
stimulation from an opposite sex partner, or a grilled cheese sandwich), and
something else seems like a powerful aversive condition (for example, sexual
stimulation from a same sex partner or the taste and texture of bugs) doesn’t
meant that the reinforcing or aversive properties of those things are
unlearned.
But it’s hard to imagine
that our sexual values are learned; instead they seem so natural to us, they
seem like something we were born with. This is because we’re unaware of the
subtle but ever-present social programming easing us into the sex roles we
acquire, just as we’re unaware of the subtle pairings and reinforcement contingencies
teaching us to love the good ol’ American grilled
cheese sandwich. And given that the large majority of us end up with
heterosexual repertoires and values, it’s even harder to imagine how a minority
end up with gay and lesbian repertoires and values, let alone transgender
repertoires and values, just as it’s harder to imagine how a minority of
Americans would seek out the gourmet taste of a deep-fried grasshopper. But few
would argue that they inherited a craving for grasshoppers. And by the same logic,
a behavioral world view suggests to us that we should not argue that our sexual
values are inherited. If you grew up in classic
If Sexual Orientation Is Not
Innate, Is It Chosen?
Whether sexual orientation
is learned or biologically determined (innate) is controversial and has
political implications. Part of the problem is that people don’t understand the
power of our behavioral histories. They think that either you inherit your
sexual values or you must choose them as you would choose which hat to wear to
school. When we say “learned” we do not mean chosen.
Suppose you’re
heterosexual. Suppose you behave in a typical similar to others of your same
biological sex. And suppose you sexual stimulation form those of the other sex
to be reinforcing and sexual stimulation from people of the same sex to be
aversive. Even if you learned your style and values, did you chose them? You
would probably say, no. No choice. Instead your style and values
resulted from your behavioral history.
People don’t understand the
concept I call preschool fatalism: Some of the behaviors and values we
learn before certain ages (e.g., preschool) interact with existing
contingencies of reinforcement and punishment in such a way as to make them
almost impossible to change when we become adults (e.g., our gringo accent or
autistic behavior and values).
Evidence for Biological
Determinism
There has been some correlational research that points to the inheritance of
male homosexuality. But others have been unable to get the same results. So
it’s hard to say what the case is. No doubt the search for a biological basis
for “sexual orientation,” will continue as it does for “criminal tendencies,”
“intelligence,” and “mental illness.” And no doubt the results will continue to
be so ambiguous that people will be able to make whatever conclusion they wish,
as in those other areas. And no doubt the research will continue to generate
much heat and controversy.
One reason for the heat and
controversy of the learned versus innate debate is the political implications.
Some advocates of gay and lesbian rights argue that society will be more
tolerant if it believes their gay and lesbian sexual behavior and values are
innate and not their “fault,” not “chosen.” Other advocates think just the
opposite. Again, this issue is based on the misconception that if we didn’t
inherit out sexual orientation, we must have chosen it.
On the other hand, just because Barlow was able to change Bobbie’s
sexual orientation using behavior-analysis training techniques does not prove
that his sexual orientation was learned. Maybe he inherited his sexual
orientation, but Barlow’s behavior-analysis techniques were so powerful that
they overcame Bobbie’s innate sexual orientation.
Yes, maybe; but Bobbie’s learning a new, heterosexual orientation does
strongly suggest that he had also learned his transgender orientation.
Incidentally, people make a similar argument concerning the causes of
“autism.” Just because the only way to successfully replace autistic
repertoires and values with more functional ones is to use behavior-analysis
training techniques does not prove that autistic repertoires and values were
learned. They might be innate, but behavior-analysis techniques are so powerful
that they overcome this innate “autism.”
Again, yes, maybe; but learning new, functional repertoires and values
does strongly suggest that “autism” was also learned.
Is homophobia learned or innate?
A few years ago, President
Bill Clinton was so brave, or so naive, as to suggest that the military should
treat gay and lesbian military personnel as if they were normal human beings
and not abnormal creatures of the night to be tarred and feathered and ridden
out of military service on a rail. Now, what amazed me was the strong, negative
reaction by the American citizens and their leaders. For
example, Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, almost resigned in protest. And although he is an
African American, he seemed unaffected by the fact that only a few years
before, the American military services had resisted with equal strength and
fury the requirement that they treat African Americans as if they, too, were
normal human beings and not required to be segregated and restricted to menial
tasks.
At first, I thought Powell
and our political leaders were just cynically playing it for a few red-neck
Neanderthals in the peanut gallery. But the more I checked it out, the more it
seemed as if they were representing a genuine homophobia that permeates the
very soul of our culture. Why?
Well, many who object to
gay and lesbian citizens quote the Bible (and of course the Bible can be quoted
back at them). But what is the Bible? Whether or not it is the word of God, the
Bible is an impressive, illustrated code of behavior the leaders of our
culture, past and present, consider best for the well-being of our society.
But why would our leaders
be concerned with sexual behavior? Because, in the biblical days on up to the
recent past, the rate of infant mortality was high. And a large population was
considered most viable, especially when competing with other warlike societies.
So our leaders claimed as taboo and immoral any alternative sexual behavior
that did not lead to procreation, whether it be:
} Onanism - masturbation
and coitus interruptus (named after Onan, son of Judah [Genesis 38:9])
} Sodomy
- anal intercourse or copulation with
an animal (named after Sodom of Sodom and Gomorrah fame, the two cities destroyed
by fire from Heaven because of their unnatural carnal wickedness, according to
the Bible; and so great a sin was sodomy that, while fleeing Sodom’s coming
destruction, Lot’s wife disobeyed God’s orders, looked back at the city and was
turned into a pillar of salt for that voyeuristic sin)
} Homosexuality - if a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth
with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be
put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Hebrew Bible. Leviticus
20:13[10]); in
European cultures, religious and secular laws against homosexuality began in
the Middle Ages as prohibitions against any kind of sexual activity not aimed a
procreation[11].
Strong language.
Traditionally, our religious and secular leaders have been pretty serious about
straying from the tried-and-true path. But notice they don’t have much to say
about self-injurious behavior, other than an occasional injunction about
harming the temple thy body. Why not? Why aren’t there major religious and
legal laws against gouging out your own eyes or pounding your head on the floor
until it bleeds? Surely those acts are just as harmful to the individual and to
society as are sexual variations. Imagine a whole culture full of people
emitting a high rate of self-injurious behavior. But that does strain the
imagination. Our religious and legal leaders have not spent much time
addressing self-injury because it is so rare, because the behavior of few
people has come under the control of the reinforcement contingencies associated
with self-injury.
But the behavior of quite a
few people has come under the control of the reinforcement contingencies
associated with nonprocreative sexual reinforcers. And, historically, our leaders have been
concerned that these concurrent contingencies of alternate sources of sexual reinforcers are so powerful and so handy that they will
seriously decrease the rate of procreative sexual behavior and thus the rate of
procreation. There will not be enough true begetting and begatting.
my point:
If we were biologically
wired to find nonprocreative sex (including
same-gender sexual stimulation) aversive rather than reinforcing, there would
be no need for all these religious and legal sanctions. But we’re not. Instead,
we’re biologically wired to find essentially any source of sexual stimulation
reinforcing. So, if our sexual behavior is to be restricted to procreative sex,
stimulation from all nonprocreative sources must be
made shameful, dirty, nasty, unnatural, learned, aversive stimuli. And this is
done through direct pairing with aversive stimuli, such as physical punishment,
and more often, through verbal analogs to such pairings, such as spoken and
written social, religious, and legal sanctions. For example, the behavior of
many, if not most, preschool children comes under the control of reinforcing
stimulation arising from masturbation and will masturbate frequently and openly
until their caretakers (parents, preschool teachers, etc.) effectively punish
that behavior physically and/or socially. Freud called this the phallic stage,
suggesting that young children naturally stop masturbating as they grow out of
it. But perhaps they naturally stop masturbating only after that act has
received enough punishment.
What amazes me is the effectiveness
of these relatively subtle pairings and analogs to pairings. So effective that
by the time we are adults, most people seem to believe we are biologically
wired to find same-gender sexual stimulation horribly aversive, so aversive
that they can’t stand the idea of being in the same military services with
people who do not find same-gender sexual stimulation aversive.
But sometimes those
relatively subtle pairings and analogs to pairings weren’t done quite that way.
Instead, because of slight differences in behavioral histories, those pairings
of same-gender sexual stimulation and aversive stimulation were too subtle, so
that same-gender sexual stimulation maintained its strong reinforcing value.
And in some of those cases, opposite-gender sexual stimulation was paired with
aversive stimulation, either directly or through verbal analogs; and thus
opposite-gender sexual stimulation became a learned aversive stimulus.
So, from my
behavior-analytic perspective (but not the only behavior-analytic perspective),
we inherit susceptibility for our behavior to be reinforced by sexual
stimulation from almost any source, including same-gender and opposite-gender
sources. It is only through aversive control that those sources are restricted.
And our different behavioral histories cause sexual stimulation from different
sources to become learned aversive stimuli, for some people, same-gender
sources have become aversive, and for other people, opposite-gender sources
have become aversive. And only with intense behavioral intervention, can those
aversions be reversed, even with voluntary participation.
Before finishing our
discussion of this issue, we should mention another political or social-systems
concern: Cultural-materialistic reality has changed greatly since biblical
times. Now we have more problems with overpopulation than with underpopulation. Yet society continues persecuting
transgender, transsexual, bisexual, gay, and lesbian citizens (social values
usually lag painfully behind materialistic reality). So who should change - the
citizens who are being persecuted or the persecuting society? Some concerned
with the development of a more tolerant society might argue for fighting rather
than switching, arguing that people with nontraditional sexual orientations should
not cave in to bigotry. We argue for doing whatever is possible to help the
individuals (whether that be to help them acquire traditional sexual
orientations or to resist the oppression of the traditional majority). But, at
the same time, all involved can work for a more tolerant society compatible
with the material and social realities of the 21st century.
Regardless of the
political/social agenda, we can summarize our position by saying that people’s
biological inheritance has no more to do with their preference for the source
of their sexual stimulation than it does with the their preference for the
source of their auditory stimulation. There is no gene that determines whether
we prefer same-gender or opposite-gender sexual stimulation, just as there is
no gene that determines whether we prefer heavy metal, new wave, or polkas -
well, maybe there is a polka gene.
Sexuality Definitions
Now that we have presented
our behavior analysis of sexual orientation, we might summarize some features
of that analysis with these behavioral definitions:
}
A heterosexual is someone (either male or female) for whom sexual
stimulation by a person of the other sex is reinforcing and sexual stimulation
by a person of the same sex is aversive.
}
A homosexual is someone (either male or female) for whom sexual
stimulation by a person of the same sex is reinforcing and sexual stimulation
by a person of the other sex is aversive.
} A transsexual or transgender
person is someone (either male or female) for whom sexual stimulation by a
heterosexual of the same biological sex is reinforcing and sexual stimulation
by a person of the other biological sex or a homosexual of the same biological
sex is aversive. A transsexual
person is someone who has had sex-change surgery, while a transgender
person has not.
To Intervene or Not to
Intervene
There are three limitations
of the Barlow study on which we base the Bobbie/Bobby story.
} Some of the data are subjective self-reports.
} Although we have follow up data for a year, we have no real-long-term follow-up data.
} There have not been much by way of replications of this study. The lack of replications could be because of the technical difficulty of doing research of this sort and the considerable social pressure from both the left and the right on scientists doing sexual research, especially research on gender identity. So the Barlow intervention has not really been proven to be a reliable or effective intervention, though it has also not been disproven. As Barlow et al say, they don’t know how typical Bobbie was of transsexual (transgender) people.
In fact, at this point,
which is quite a few years after the original Barlow study, if a homosexual or
a transgender person were to come to me for help, I would probably suggest that
their best bet might be to find or move to a community that would be less
aversive for them to participate in as a gay, lesbian, or transgender person,
if their current community were as repressive as Bobbies was. This seems to be
what the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual community would recommend, also.
Incidentally, this
community and much of the professional psychological and psychiatric
communities object to efforts to change or help change people’s sexual orientation.
I think this is for two reasons:
} They think that sexual orientation is a biologically determined part of an individual’s essence and thus not to be tampered with.
} There is practically no scientific evidence that attempts to change sexual orientation have been successful; and in some or many cases, those attempts may have just created more problems for the client.
However none of this means
I think a skilled behavior analyst couldn’t or shouldn’t replicate Barlow’s
intervention, if the client could find a behavior analyst with Barlow’s skills
and resources to do the intensive training the person would need. But,
generally, it’s so hard to make such an extensive change in some sorts of
repertoire and values of adults that it is almost impossible. For example, even
the world-famous Ivar Lovaas
restricts his work to preschool autistic children; to my knowledge, no
one has had the success with teenage autistic clients that many people
have had with preschool autistic children.
The Big Deal
So why do we make such a
big deal of the Barlow study in this book?
} Because it illustrates what I think is the least you would have to do, if you were to help someone make as complete a transformation as Bobby did. You can’t solve big problems of this sort with once-a-week talk therapy.
} This study provides an excellent intro to the analysis of the complex issues involved in the nature-nurture debate--biological determinism vs. behavioral contingencies and behavioral history.
QUESTIONS
1. According to this book, sexual
behavior is
a. learned
b. innate
2. According to this book, the reinforcing and
punishing value of different sexual stimuli (for example, tactual [touch]
stimuli) is
a. learned
b. innate
3. According to this book, the reinforcing and
punishing value of the sources (not type) of different sexual stimuli (for
example, a good-looking man or woman) is
a. learned
b. innate
4. According
to this book, homophobia is
a. learned
b. innate
5. According to this book, if we were
biologically wired to find nonprocreative sex
(including same-gender sexual stimulation) aversive rather than reinforcing,
there would be no need for the large number of religious and legal laws against
nonprocreative sex.
a. true
b. false
ADVANCED ENRICHMENT[12]Controversy:
FIVE PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Before you leave this book
and enter the world of heavy-duty intellectual conflict, here’s an introduction
to five alternative points of view you might encounter. These include the
philosophies of:
™
spiritualistic mentalism
™
materialistic mentalism
™
cognitive
behavior modification
™
methodological
behaviorism
™
radical
behaviorism—the EPB point of view (i.e., the correct view)
Each of these five
philosophies accepts or rejects four basic concepts. These include:
™
mentalism
™
materialism
™
all psychological
events are behavioral
™
private events
To get a better understanding
of how these concepts are woven into the five different philosophies, we’ve put
together a mythical conversation between the representative philosophers. To
illustrate the philosophies, we have analyzed a single event, in terms of each
view. And the event we will analyze is Todd’s bowel movement.
Please imagine five wise
philosopher-psychologists. They are the Board of Philosophical Censors sitting
in a castle, high above the land (maybe in Heaven), discussing a controversial
textbook. Each philosopher-psychologist represents a different view.
Point: And to help you navigate this dialogue we will recap
the important points in a grayed background like this.
MENTALISM
The Materialistic Mentalist: Have you read this textbook we’re in?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: Yes, I have; and I’m really angry.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Me too. What’s your beef?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: That book ignores the most important concept in
psychology—the mind.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: I agree, mind is where it’s at. I use it all the time.
Definition: Concepts
Mentalism
□ the
doctrine that the mind causes behavior to occur[13]
Mind
□ an
entity or collection of entities
□ assumed to cause behavior
□ It may be either material
or nonmaterial
□ but it is not the behavior
itself
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: Yes, you remember Todd - the constipated boy? A good example
of the limitations of behaviorism. Todd had closed his mind to the idea
of bowel movements. Then he changed his mind; and his mind caused
him to have bowel movements. His mind willed him to go to the bathroom
or not. But Dawn completely ignored the poor little fellow’s mind, when she
instructed Todd’s mother to give him a piece of bubblegum immediately after
each bowel movement.
The Materialistic Mentalist: Our mind
causes us to feel as we feel, to think as we think, to act as we act—in short,
to be as we are. Ignore our mind and you ignore our most important structure.
And that’s my criticism of those behaviorists; they have no place for mind in
their world view.
Point:
Mentalists believe in mentalism; in other words, they
believe the mind causes us to behave.
So we’ve got mentalists and
we’ve got behaviorists. But we philosophical psychologists split hairs a little
finer than that. Now let’s look at the two kinds of mentalism.
SPIRITUALISTIC MENTALISM
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: That brings up the other thing that’s bugging me. Todd’s case
study and the whole book too accurately reflect the materialistic nature of contemporary
psychology and philosophy.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: You think we’re only in it for the money?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: No, I mean materialistic in a different sense. I don’t think
you’re mercenary money grubbers any more than I am. (The spiritualist smiled,
showing she understood the ambiguity of her reply, yet still leaving it for her
audience to decide whether they were all money grubbers or none were.) I mean
you deal only with the material side of Todd; you ignore his nonmaterial dimension,
his spiritual dimension.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Just what is this nonmaterial, spiritual dimension you claim
we ignore?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: When you talk about the mind as a structure, you reveal that
you think of the mind as a physical entity.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Of course. What else is there?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: There’s the nonmaterial side of life. Early human beings
conceived of the nonmaterial spirit to help them understand the world (a thing’s
spirit caused it to act as it did). Then the concept of nonmaterial spirit
shifted into the concept of nonmaterial soul to help later human beings
understand the world (a thing’s soul caused it to act as it did). And now the
concept of nonmaterial soul has shifted into the concept of nonmaterial mind,
still helping us understand our world (our mind’s causes us to act as we do).
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Your history fascinates me. You say that all three terms, spirit,
soul, and mind, originally referred to more or less the same
nonmaterial dimension. You claim we shifted from spirit to soul to mind. But I
always think of mind as a physical, material entity.
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: Of course you do. And the rest of my history says why: The nonmaterial
mind shifted into the material mind because of the materialistic, scientific
world view so popular now. You’ve forgotten the nonmaterial ancestors of the
mind—the soul and the spirit.
Definition: Concept
Materialism
□
the doctrine that the physical (material) world
□
is the only reality[14]
Spiritualism
□ the doctrine that the
world is divided into two parts,
material and spiritual[15]
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Perhaps, but I don’t even understand what it means for something
to be spiritual, not to be physical or material or materialistic.
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: That’s so sad. You scientific psychologists will never
understand, because with science you can only study the material, not the
nonmaterial, not the spiritual. You insist that ultimately everything is
physical, that ultimately human beings consist of no more than a few cents
worth of chemicals.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: The price may have gone up a bit since the last time you
checked with that old cliché. But don’t you agree that “from dust thou art and
to dust thou shall return”?
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: Our physical body, yes, but not our spirit, not our soul, not
our mind. The spirit, the soul, the mind, whatever you want to call it, contains
our essence, what we are. You can never bribe the human spirit with bubblegum,
like Dawn tried with Todd.
Definition: Concept
Spiritualistic mentalism
□ the doctrine that the mind is spiritual
(nonphysical).
MATERIALISTIC MENTALISM
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Sorry, I just can’t buy that. Dawn did a good job of getting
Todd to have regular bowel movements, and she did this with bubble gum. The
chance to get the materialistic bubble gum caused Todd to change his
materialistic mind which decided to have a materialistic bowel movement. His
changed mind caused his bowels to move.
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: You materialists really strain to deny the spiritual
side of life.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: You’re right, most of us modern psychologists don’t buy into
your view of a nonmaterial world. We’re material creatures in a material world.
Nothing exists other than that handful of chemicals, those molecules, those
electrons, those subatomic particles, whirling around.
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: I pity you and your barren, materialistic philosophy.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Please don’t interrupt me with your condescending sympathy;
I’m not done. What I wanted to say is that at least some of us contemporary
psychologists still study the mind.
The Spiritualistic
Mentalist: Yes, but a material mind, one that ultimately consists of
only that handful of chemicals, not the immaterial mind. Not the true mind.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: The universe contains material reality. Todd had material bowel
movements. And his material mind caused him to do so.
Definition: Concept
Materialistic mentalism
□ the
doctrine that the mind is physical, not spiritual.
Point:
there are two kinds of mentalism, spiritual mentalism
and materialistic mentalism. They both believe that
the mind causes us to behave, but the materialistic mentalist thinks that the
mind is physical (more or less synonymous with the brain), while the
spiritualistic mentalist think that the mind is spiritual (like the soul).
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Can I squeeze into this conversation? That
immaterial nonsense is so far out in left field it’s immaterial to everything.
But I’d like to hear more about Todd’s material mind.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: Todd had a bowel movement when his mind told him to. He had a
bowel movement when his mind thought it was the right time. He had a bowel
movement when his mind perceived that it would benefit him, when his mind
sensed the need to do so, when his mind believed it was reasonable, when his
mind had the desire to do so. Todd’s material mind made the decisions about
when and how he should act.
(Note that we could have
filled in Todd’s mind in the spiritual mentalistic
view with much the same activities as in the materialist mentalistic
view. The main difference between the two views is whether that mind is
spiritual or physical.)
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: I’ve got bad news for you materialistic
mentalists. The mind you speak of is as much a fiction as the spiritualist’s
nonmaterial world—pure invention. Todd’s mind doesn’t tell Todd what to do.
Todd tells himself what to do, based on his perceptions of reality—based on
whether he attributes to himself or to others responsibility for control over
his life, whether he expects the proper response will produce reinforcers, whether he believes he can effectively produce
the desired response. He has hypotheses about what works; he has rules for
effective action.
The Materialistic
Mentalist: But those are all properties of Todd’s mind.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: I think not. We no longer need the
old-fashioned concept of mind. Instead we have the modern concept of cognitive
structure, with its cognitions—perceptions, attributions,
expectations, beliefs, sense of efficacy or effectiveness,
hypotheses, rules. Todd controls his actions through his
cognitions. He attributes to himself the ability to control his life: He
expects a bowel movement will get him some bubble gum. And he believes he can
effectively produce the bowel movement when he has a sensation of bowel
pressure. We needn’t invent a mind to explain Todd’s actions.
Point:
the Cognitive Behaviorist doesn’t believe
in the mind. Instead he believes
in the cognitive structure which he thinks is the cause of all behavior.
Definition: Concepts
Cognitive structure
□ an entity
□ assumed to cause action;
□ the way the organism sees the world,
□ including the organism’s beliefs and expectations.
□ It is material, but not behavior.
Cognitive behavior modification
□ an
approach that attempts to modify behavior
□ by modifying the cognitive structure
The Radical
Behaviorist: Now let me get in on this. The behavior analyst’s concept
of rule control deals with most of these same issues. But, to make my point
clearer, let’s drop the bubble gum intervention and look at the dessert
intervention Dawn and Todd’s mother later used (Chapter 24). Remember, Todd’s
mother told him the following rule: If you have a bowel movement anytime before
dinner, I’ll give you a dessert after dinner. We could say Todd’s behavior
came under the control of that rule; it was rule governed.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Perhaps, but rule-governed behavior is behavior.
And I’m talking about more than behavior. You can’t reinforce Todd’s
cognitions—his sensations, perceptions, attributions, expectations, beliefs,
sense of efficacy, hypotheses, rules.[16]
Instead, when Todd’s bowel movements produce dessert, his perception of this
helps him make a hypothesis that his bowel movements cause his mother to
give him the desired gum. He then expects that gum from his mother will follow
his bowel movements. He believes it. And he believes in his own efficacy,
his effectiveness in getting the dessert. He attributes to himself the ability
to get the dessert. All of this involves Todd’s cognitive structure—his
expectations, hypotheses, rules, and so on. However, his cognitive structure
can also change the way he experiences what you behaviorists call
reinforcement. I’m saying how he perceives the dessert’s relation to his
behavior can change the effects of the so-called reinforcement. In other words,
the delivery of dessert following Todd’s behavior influences his cognitions; but
also his cognitions influence the way the dessert affects his behavior; if he
doesn’t perceive, believe, and attribute to himself that he can have a bowel
movement and get dessert, your so-called reinforcement won’t work.
The Radical
Behaviorist: I think cognitive behavior modification is simply a special
type of materialistic mentalism. And your cognitive
structure is just the mentalist’s mind.
Point:
the Radical Behaviorist thinks that the
mind and cognitive structure are essentially the same thing, invented
explanatory fictions, even if they have different names. Both cognitive
behaviorist and mentalists think that nonbehavioral, nonenvironmental structures cause the person to
behave.
RADICAL BEHAVIORISM[17]
The Radical
Behaviorist: But we’re talking about the same thing; you’ve just added a
few unneeded concepts, that’s all.
The Cognitive Behavior
Modifier: Such as?
The Radical
Behaviorist: All the cognitions—the perceptions, attributions,
hypotheses. We don’t need these terms as special cognitive structures. We can
explain the success of Dawn’s second intervention simply by saying that Todd
performed the behavior of stating a rule. He said to himself, If I have a
bowel movement today, I’ll get dessert tonight. And that rule controlled
his having a bowel movement.
Definition: Concept
Radical Behaviorism
□ an approach that addresses all
psychology
□ in terms of the principles of
behavior
Radical behaviorists are
willing to consider all the data of psychology, including the data of such nonbehavioral psychologists as Freud and Piaget. Radical
behaviorists are willing to consider private events such as thinking, dreaming,
and feeling. But in all cases they consider such data and events in terms of
the principles of behavior. And they consider events such as thinking and
dreaming to be behavior.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Don’t forget beliefs. Todd must believe in the
rule.
The Radical
Behaviorist: We don’t need belief as a special cognition. We just appeal
to Todd’s behavioral history. The rule statement will govern his behavior if
similar rules statements have proven accurate in the past. The simple concept
of language-based, rule-governed behavior is all we need to deal with the
complexities of your cognitions. And we need only the concept of rule-governed
behavior when we’re dealing with indirect-acting analogs to contingencies
of reinforcement and punishment. (Of course, the analysis of how rule control
works isn’t simple.)
Point:
Radical Behaviorists think that the
behavior of stating a rule can control behavior, if rules have accurately
described a consequences in the past.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Is that so? Then what about the first
procedure Dawn tried with Todd, in which his mother gave him a piece of bubble
gum immediately after a bowel movement? Did that involve rule-governed
behavior?
The Radical
Behaviorist: Not necessarily. That might have been a simple,
direct-acting, reinforcement contingency, not an indirect-acting analog to
reinforcement. Todd needed no rules, because the reinforcer followed the
response immediately; that means the reinforcer was able to reinforce the
response—the contingency was able to directly act on the bowel movement
behavior without the aid of rule statements. But with the dessert, the
reinforcer was too delayed to reinforce the bowel movement; so he needed a rule
describing that contingency.
Point:
Radical Behaviorists believe both rule
statements and direct-acting contingencies control behavior in humans.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Well, from our view, Todd had cognitive rules
(not your language-based rules) even with the immediate bubble gum. And because
of the bubble-gum contingency, Todd modifies his cognitive structure—his
cognitive rules, hypotheses, and expectations. He now expects bubble gum after
a bowel movement. But that’s not because the bubble gum reinforces anything.
The Radical
Behaviorist: I’m afraid I don’t see the need for all this cognitive
structure.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Let me take it further. What about nonverbal
animals? Do rules govern their behavior?
The Radical
Behaviorist: Of course not. An animal can’t state a rule if it can’t
talk.
The Cognitive
Behavior Modifier: Right, but we cognitive behavior modifiers
contend that animals have cognitions; they have beliefs, expectations, rules,
and hypotheses. And it is these cognitions that determine their actions. So you
see that when we talk about people’s beliefs, expectations, rules, and
hypotheses, we mean more than you do with your simple rule-governed behavior.
That’s why we’re more than behavioral; we’re also cognitive. We believe
cognition controls behavior.
The Radical
Behaviorist: And that’s where I think you go too far. You don’t need to
invent all those complex cognitive concepts to account for the learned behavior
of animals. The direct-acting contingencies of reinforcement and punishment are
all you need there. Why add extra baggage?
Point:
Radical behaviorists believe that direct
acting contingencies control the behavior of animals. And because animals do
not have rule-governed behavior. indirect acting contingencies can not control
their behavior. On the other hand, cognitivists
believe that cognitions control the behavior of animals, as well as human
beings.
METHODOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM
The Methodological Behaviorist: I’m the only one who hasn’t gotten into this debate,
so I guess it’s my turn. I’m afraid you, my radical-behaviorist friend, also
have some extra baggage—all that rule-governed-behavior business. You don’t
really need the concepts of rule-governed behavior and indirect-acting analog
contingencies.
The Radical
Behaviorist: I agree with you part way; I agree we don’t need these more
complex concepts when we’re dealing with nonverbal animals, like the rat in the
Skinner box. And often we don’t need them when we’re dealing with direct-acting
contingencies, as when Todd’s mother gives him some gum immediately after a
bowel movement. Take another look at the last diagram we showed—the one
involving direct reinforcement with gum. Look closely and you’ll see the label
at the bottom of that one is General Behavioral View, not Radical
Behavioral View.
The Methodological Behaviorist: So?
The Radical
Behaviorist: My point is that you and I agree there. Then the diagram
explains the view of both the radical and the methodological behaviorist. We
agree in our analysis of the processes governing behavior, when only
direct-acting contingencies of reinforcement and punishment are involved.
The Methodological Behaviorist: OK, but we sure don’t agree in the case where Todd
gets his dessert sometime after the bowel movement. I don’t like the idea of
your guessing about private events, such as what people think or say to themselves.
Seems like mentalism to me.
The Radical
Behaviorist: True, mentalists make inferences about unobserved events,
and so do I. Yet there’s a difference in the inference. Mentalists infer causes
of a type they’ve never observed (mental, nonbehavioral
causes, often nonmaterial causes). But radical behaviorists of the sort I
represent infer behavioral processes (people covertly stating rules to
themselves) just like those we can often observe (others publicly
stating rules to people). It just happens that we can’t observe people covertly
stating rules to themselves; but we’ve no reason to think covertly stating
rules differs from someone else’s overtly stating rules to a person. So even in
this difficult, covert case, probably we’ve got nothing more than behavior to
which our standard principles of behavior apply.
The Methodological Behaviorist: It seems to me that one inference is as bad as
another. It doesn’t matter whether you’re inferring covert behavioral process,
or covert cognitive process, or covert materialistic mental process, or covert
spiritualistic mental process. They’re all bad news and have no place in a true
science. As far as I’m concerned, your inferred covert rules are made of the
same materialistic, mentalistic stuff as the
cognitive behavior modifier’s cognitive structures.
The Radical
Behaviorist: I think the nature of the inference does matter. For
example, you might ask me why the screen door is rattling. And I might infer
that it’s the wind, or I might infer that it’s evil spirits trying to get into
the house. The inference of wind fits more comfortably into an interpretation
based on materialistic, natural science than does the inference of evil
spirits.
The Methodological Behaviorist: Perhaps, but as an empirical scientist, I prefer to
stay away from any kind of inferences. I prefer to include in our science only
those events that two or more independent observers can directly observe.
Point: Methodological behaviorists don’t
believe in inferred, private events, not even in rule-governed behavior.
Definition: Concept
Methodological Behaviorism
} an approach that restricts the science of psychology to
} only those independent and dependent variables
} that two independent people can directly observe.
Radical Behaviorist:
That’s clearly the safest road, but as Skinner said many years ago, if we’re
going to tell the whole story, our natural science of behavior must deal with
private events.
Because our radical
behaviorist got the last word, you can correctly assume that her philosophy
represents that of the authors of EPB.
Compare and Contrast:
FIVE VIEWS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Lets review the points:
Point:
Mentalists believe in mentalism;
in other words, they believe the mind causes us to behave.
Point:
there are two varieties of mentalism; spiritual mentalism
and materialistic mentalism. Both types of mentalists
believe that the mind causes us to behave, but the materialistic mentalist
thinks the mind is physical (more or less synonymous with the brain), while the spiritualistic mentalist
thinks that the mind is spiritual (like the soul)
Point:
the Cognitive Behaviorist doesn’t believe
in the mind. Instead, he believes in the cognitive structure which he thinks is
the cause of all behavior.Point: the
Radical Behaviorist thinks that the mind and the cognitive structure are the
same thing, even if they have different names. This is because both cognitive
behaviorist and mentalists think that some nonbehavioral,
nonenvironmental structures cause the person
to behave.
Point:
Radical Behaviorist think that the
behavior of stating a rule, can control
behavior.
Point:
Radical Behaviorsts
believe both rule control and direct acting contingencies control behavior in
human beings.
Point:
Radical behaviorists believe that only
direct acting contingencies control the behavior of animals. Conitivist believe that cognitions control the behavior of
animals.
Point:
Methodological behaviorists don’t believe
in inferred, private events, not even in rule-governed behavior.
|
View |
Mentalistic [18](The
mind causes behavior) |
Materialistic (physical
things cause us to behave |
All psychological events
are behavioral |
Infers private events |
|
Spiritualistic Mentalism |
Y |
N |
N |
Y |
|
Cognitive Behavior
Modification |
Y[19] |
Y |
N |
Y |
|
Radical Behaviorism |
N |
Y |
Y |
Y |
|
Methodological
Behaviorism |
N |
Y |
Y |
N |
|
Materialistic Mentalism |
Y |
Y |
N |
Y |
How common are each of
these five views?
Spiritualistic mentalism is
the oldest, and it has played a large role in the field of philosophy,
especially in previous centuries. Though spiritualistic mentalism may still
have some popularity outside psychology, it isn’t too common among professional
psychologists. Materialistic mentalism is probably the most common view in
psychology. It seems to us to describe the common approach called cognitive
psychology, including cognitive behavior modification. We also would
classify most psychoanalysis (for example Freudian psychoanalysis) as
materialistic mentalism.
Methodological behaviorism
is the most popular view among behaviorists. Though, methodological behaviorist
often erroneously call themselves radical behaviorist as we will explain
in the next section. By the way, these sections on the five philosophical views
of psychology are among the most difficult in our book. Serious students report
that they need to read this advanced enrichment section at least 2 or 3 times
to get a comfortable understanding of these views. If you double dip, you may
find that the second reading goes much more smoothly.
THREE ERRORS
There are two basic
philosophical errors that cognitive and methodological behaviorism contain,
which radical behaviorism avoids.
Definition: Concepts
The simplistic cognitivist error
□ Rats think
The simplistic behaviorist
error
□ People don’t think
I believe the cognitivist
error is fairly common. People often attribute the cause of behavior to a cognitive
process. In other words, the rat presses the lever because he “knows” (a
cognitive process) he will get water. When you get right down to it, cognitivism
is nothing more than the view of the everyday, person on the street dressed up
in the intellectual’s clothing, with them big scientific, PhD-sounding
words like cognitive structure.
The behaviorist error is
restricted to methodological behaviorists; unfortunately, the majority of
behaviorists seem to be methodological, even when they erroneously call
themselves radical behaviorists.
When dealing with the
philosophical basis of psychology, our enemy should be simplistic analyses,
regardless of their sources. (By simplistic analyses, we mean
analyses that are oversimplified, that ignore the complexities and subtleties
of an issue.)
From my view methodological
behaviorism is simplistic in that it makes simplistic extrapolations from the
contingencies of the Skinner box to all the complex contingencies controlling
the lives of verbal human beings, thereby committing the behaviorist error of
denying that people think.
And the cognitivism is
simplistic in that it makes simplistic extrapolations from the thinking verbal
human being to the nonverbal and therefore nonthinking
rat in the Skinner box.
Cognitivism is also
simplistic in that its concepts tend to be mere commonsense reifications of
behavioral processes. (Remember reification? It’s like: Why does
Helen lose her temper so easily? Because she has an angry cognitive structure.
How do you know she has an angry cognitive structure? Because she loses her
temper so easily.)
Biological
Determinism. Another major source of simplistic analyses is biological
determinism—the theory that many of the important behavioral differences
between people are genetic; just one set of many examples is sexual behavior
and sexual values, as we discussed earlier.
Two common types of
simplistic analysis flow from biological determinism: The first type of
simplistic analysis is to assume that the same biological/behavioral processes
directly underlying some form of complex human behavior are the same as those
underlying some relatively simpler form of animal behavior, especially when the
two behaviors serve similar functions.
One example of this sort of
simplistic analysis would be to say a person’s building a home is based on a
nest-building instinct, in more than a poetic sense, with the implication that
instinctive reinforcers similar to those controlling an animal’s nest building,
before mating season or before winter, also control the behavior of the owner
of Big Bart’s Construction Company, or the behavior of Sid and Dawn when they
hired Big Bart to build their house. Another example is the biological
determinists’ argument that a woman’s putting on lipstick is genetically
programmed to attract a mate, just as is the reddening of the rump of the
receptive female baboon—no kidding!
The second type of
simplistic analysis coming from
biological determinism is the assumption that the genetic processes underlying
some form of complex human behavior are the same as those that underlie the
inheritance of our biochemical-chemical/anatomical functions and structures. So
biological determinists argue that the difference between people in terms of
their skills at complex matching to sample, skills at repeating long lists of
numbers, and knowing who wrote Faust (such repertoires as are sampled on
IQ tests) are innate in the same way as are the differences in height and eyecolor.
Incidentally, the people in
power rely heavily on biological determinism to defend the status quo and to
defend their staying in power. For example, women are genetically programmed to
be mothers/housewives, while men are genetically programmed to be executives.
(Honey, I wish you had that mathematics gene, but seeing as you don’t, would
you mind doing the dishes, mopping the floor, and ironing my shirts after you
nurse baby, while I go off to my office in the
Similarly, wealthy whites
are genetically programmed to rule the world, while poor people and people of
color unfortunately lack those crucial high-IQ/get-up-and-go genes. (Honey, I
wish you had them high-IQ/get-up-and-go genes, but seeing as you don’t, would
you mind doing the dishes, mopping the floor, and ironing my shirts after you
nurse baby, while the missus and I go off to the Mega-Buck Bank Building
Banquet? And when we get back, you can take a couple hours off to visit your
son who was genetically programmed to end up in his new home, Big State Prison;
such a pity.)
You think I’m kidding? Then
check out The Bell Curve,[20] a
best-selling, scholarly book, written by a couple of guys with real high
IQ/get-up-and-go genes.
Now the fact that the more
powerful use biological determinism to justify their suppression of the less
powerful doesn’t necessarily mean biological determinism is wrong. But it might
give a person pause to consider. The divine right of kings is alive and well in
All of these examples of
biological determinism illustrate what we call the simplistic biological-
determinist error:
Definition: Concept
The simplistic
biological-determinist error
□ Analogous behaviors are
□ homologous behaviors
By analogous behaviors we
mean behaviors that serve the same function (e.g., building a nest and building
a house). And by homologous behaviors, we mean behaviors that have the same
directly underlying behavioral causes (e.g., genetically determined,
instinctive reinforcers). So anz example of the
simplistic biological-determinist error is that a bird’s nest building and a
human’s house building are both instinctive because they both serve the same
function.
To stretch this new concept
slightly, the simplistic biological-determinist error also is to make an
analogy between performance on an IQ test and eye color or height and then to
assume they are homologous in that differences between individuals on IQ
performance tests have genetic involvement, just as do differences in eye color
and height.
We consider many of the
arguments based on biological determinism to be simplistic; but this criticism
is not to deny that we are biological animals nor that the principles of
biology apply to us. It’s just like another concern we have: we consider many
of the extrapolations from Rudolph in the Skinner box to be simplistic; but
this concern is not to deny that we are behavioral animals, that there is a
little of the rodent in all of us (maybe quite a little); and this concern is
not to deny that the basic principles of behavior underlie all our actions.
It’s just to say that we’ve got to be careful; be simple, not simplistic,
whether we’re talking about the application of biological principles or
behavioral principles.
QUESTIONS
1. What are
three related terms that originally all referred to the nonmaterial dimension?
2. What seems
to be the dominant view in contemporary psychology about the reality of a
nonmaterial world?
3. According to
the mentalistic view, what causes a person to behave? Give an example.
4. According
to the cognitive-behavior-modification view, what causes a person to behave?
Give an example.
5. According
to the radical behaviorist view, what role do cognitive structures play?
6. According
to the radical behaviorist view, what causes a person to behave? Give an
example.
7. How do
cognitive behavior modifiers and radical behaviorists differ in their view of
animal behavior?
8. How do
radical behaviorists and methodological behaviorists differ in their view of
complex human behavior involving delayed reinforcers?
9. Draw a
table showing the position the five views of psychology take concerning
mentalism, materialism, behaviorism, and inferences of private events.
10. Give an
example of each of these three errors:
a. the simplistic cognitivist error
b. the simplistic behaviorist error
c. the simplistic biological-determinist error
11. Define each
of the following concepts (we normally recommend this question for graduate
courses but not undergraduate courses):
a. mentalism
b. mind
c. materialism
d. materialistic mentalism
e. spiritualistic mentalism
f. cognitive structure
g. cognitive behavior modification
h. radical behaviorism
i. methodological
behaviorism
j. the simplistic cognitivist error
k. the simplistic behaviorist error
l. the simplistic biological-determinist error
Conceptual
Question
1. What is your opinion of the merits of each of the five
views of psychology? What do you see as the
strengths and weaknesses of each?
[1]For an advanced treatment of goal-directed systems design, see Malott, R. W., & Garcia, M. E. (1987). A goal-directed model for the design of human performance systems. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 9, 125—159.
[2]System: 1. A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. 2. A social, economic, or political organizational form. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed.). Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation.
[3]Based
on Malott, R. W., & Kent, H. (1976). The development of moral control. In
J. Krapfl (Ed.), Behaviorism and ethics.
[4]We’ve asked some professors of religion about the appropriateness of this topic and they thought that the topic was interesting and important. One in particular thought that an important benefit to society of religion is moral control; and he believed, as we do, that moral control is primarily based on aversive control. He told us that our presentation of moral control can be applied to most religions without dismantling their belief systems.
[5]Based in part on Malott, R. W. (1988). Rule-governed behavior and behavioral anthropology. The Behavior Analyst, 11, 181—203.
[6]However, some argue that once you are saved, once you accept Jesus Christ into your heart, you will go to Heaven automatically. Perhaps, but surely, only if accepting Jesus Christ means that you stop sinning and dedicate yourself to a life of good deeds. In other words, how do we know a person has truly accepted Jesus? We know people not simply by their words but also by their deeds. To accept Jesus Christ into your heart means you walk the walk; you don’t just talk the talk. If a person claims to accept Jesus but continues in extremely sinful ways, surely Heaven’s gates would not open for that person. It seems as if Heaven is entered only by those who live a righteous life, not by those who merely say they have accepted Jesus Christ.
1 There is also the a more predestinationist Christian view that states that Jesus died to save us from our sins, that whether or not we sin, it has been preordained that we either will or won’t go to heaven. However, if you sin, in spite of what Jesus has done for you, you are a disappointment, even though you may have been predestined to sin and be a disappointment. And it might be that this knowledge that you will be a disappointment also sets up analog avoidance and punishment contingencies that are part of the predestnatinist system that prevents you from sinning. On the other hand, it may be that some predestinationist Christians would prefer not to consider that behavioral processes may be involved in the predestination of moral behavior.
[7]Thanks
to Kent Johnson for his careful critique of our treatment of these issues in EPB 4.0. He helped make this overall
analysis much clearer and hopefully less offensive, even though I argue against
prenatal influence on the value of sources of sexual reinforcers and he argues
for prenatal influence. Incidentally,
[8]de Waal, F. B. M. (1995, March). Bonobo sex and society. Scientific American, 82-88.
[9]Editors.
(1994). Homosexuality. Microsoft Encarta.
[10]The
Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia University
Press. Copyright © 1993 by
[11]The
Concise Columbia Encyclopedia is licensed from Columbia University Press.
Copyright © 1995 by
[12]Wowee, boy and girls, they’ve slipped another Advanced Enrichment section in on us. And we know what that means, don’t we. It means it’s time to hunker down and read this baby two or three times until we get it straight, or almost straight. Tough stuff, but important enough that many professors requested that we add it. So, grab that yellow highlighter and go for it.
[13] Mentalism: n, the doctrine that there is a
distinct group of conscious or mental phenomena not reducible without reminder
to physical phenomena. English, H.B
& English, A.C. (1958) A comprehensive
dictionary of psychological and psycholanalytical
terms.
The belief that some mental phenomena cannot be explained by physical
laws. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (3rd
ed.). Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO
Corporation.
[14] Materialism: in philosophy, a widely
held system of thought that explains the nature of the world as entirely
dependant on matter, the final reality.
Early Greek teaching, e.g., that of Democritus, Epicurus, and the
proponents of Stoicism, conceived of reality as material in nature. The theory was renewed and developed
beginning in the 17th cent., especially by Hobbes, and in the 18th
cent. Locke’s investigations were
adapted to the materialist position. The
system was developed further from the middle of the 19th cent.,
particularly in the form of dialectical materialism and in the formulations of
logical positivism. The Concrete Columbia Encyclopedia is licensed from Columbia University
Press. Copyright © 1995 by
[15] Spiritual: of, relating to, consisting
of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material, immaterial. Of, concerned with, or affecting the
soul. Relating to or having the nature
of spirits or a spirit; supernatural. The American Heritage Dictionary. [Note that
we’re not using spiritualism in the modern sense of spiritualism, the belief that the dead manifest their presence to
people, usually through a clairvoyant or medium.] Microsoft®
Encarta© Encyclopedia 99. © 1993 – 1998 Microsoft Corporation.
[16]Not all cognitive behavior modifiers would take this position; some do attempt to reinforce thoughts or at least to reinforce the behavior of thinking.
[17]There seem to be as many different varieties of behaviorism as behaviorists. (This is probably true of mentalism and cognitivism as well.) So we don’t pretend to have defined the radical and methodological behaviorism views, rather just one variety of each. There’s a good chance your professor will not find herself or himself fitting comfortably into either of our definitions and will want to provide a supplemental or even an alternate definition. That additional definition would be great, as no doubt it will point to important issues we have not addressed.
[18] I think mentalistic and behavioristic are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. In other words, a psychological view is either mentalistic or behavioristic and it must be one or the other.
[19] We argue that the cognitivist’s and the cognitive behavior modifier’s cognitive structure is just a modern version of the mind, and thus cognitive behavior modification is essentially mentalistic.
[20]
Herrnstein, R. J. & Murray, C. (1994). The