House Hold Chores, Operant Conditioning & Perverse Incentives

Whenever I give live programs on how to stop harassment using behavioral science - this comes up.

As I'm teaching a team how to train a bully to stop using rewards, reinforcements and neutral responses, someone will inevitably ask me whether they can use this to get their spouse to do the dishes.

The short answer is yes. You can. 

And I highly recommend doing it if you want a happy humanist marriage.  A good division of labor for chores is really helpful to make sure that one person doesn't feel exploited.  Humanist marriages are about collaborative partnerships, not exploitation. Using marriage as an excuse to exploit the labor of your spouse is not ok. And yes, I do suddenly find myself sounding like a communist. But the point is - a marriage creates a community and a voluntary one at that. If you do not treat your spouse with dignity - they can leave!!!

Ok - so - how do you do it?  First - I recommend taking my - ending harassment course and/or reading my book the Bully Vaccine.  Either of these will help give you a grounding in the science of behavioral modification. 

Second, commit to only using these powers for good.

Third, review your current interactions. The reason your spouse isn't helping is probably because you are disincentive them. If they do a chore and instead of thanks and rewards, they get  a lecture of how everything they did was wrong, you will very quickly find that they do NOT want to do the chore. You aren't helping them. You aren't positively rewarding the behavior you want - the dishes done. You are training them to not do it by punishing them when they do it. Seriously. This is the dynamic.

If you want to change the outcome, you need to change the dynamic. And that means - really think about what it is you want them to do and then - reward them for doing it!!!!! This does require you to allow them to do it wrong and not the way you would do it. The point is - they did it and they should be rewarded.

Should you have to reward them for doing a chore they should be doing anyway?  Yes!!!!!! OK. No. I understand they should just do it - but pretend you are training a dog to do a new trick. You have to reward the behavior you want in order to establish it.

My husband and son - do the dishes. Without me asking. Yes - this really does work. No - I don't make a fuss when they don't do it the way I would do it. Why? Because I would rather they do the dishes than do it my way.  As long as the dishes get cleaned and I didn't have to do them  - to me- that's a win. And yes - the little amount of time it takes to thank them - which you should be doing anyway - because people like to be appreciated - is well worth the teeny bit of effort it takes me to say - thank you!

People really need to get off the - I'm the injured long suffering party and I need to be catered too high horse they are on in their marriages. Just be nice to each other. When a spouse does a chore - even if they do it wrong - thank them for the effort!!!!

Treat your spouse with dignity. They are an adult (I hope) and you married them for a reason. Treat them as if they are the awesome person you want them to be and let them live up to your expectations.

Please note - that this only really works when you and your spouse are basically sane mature adults. If one of you has a mental health issue like OCD - then I have another suggestion for you.  One time I had a guy in one of my sessions who was the one who asked this. He said he had OCD and hated the way his wife did dishes and he was really hoping to train her to do them the way he likes.   My advice to him was this. if you REALLY can't stand how she does it - stop asking that she do it. Just - that's your job. Period. Let her do another chore that isn't going to trigger you. Not everything has to be a fight. Divide up the labor and allow each partner to have autonomy over it.

I lived in a house in college with 6 people total. I hated dishes piled up and so did the dishes. One of the guys hated dirty floors and so was always sweeping. Another hated trash being piled up and so would take the trash out. Another hated dirty kitchen and so would clean the kitchen and dining room table. You get the idea.

Everyone complained that they were the only ones doing that particular chore. But no one in the house was slacking. We all had chores that became ours by virtue of our low tolerance for that problem. We had migrated to our jobs and divided up the labor evenly.

Really look at your chore list and divide it up and give people autonomy. Or split the parts of the chores up. Hubby unloads, wife loads the dishwasher. Whatever it is. you can come up with an equitable division of labor if you let go of the control of needing the job done a certain way.

And if you can't let it go - then do it yourself and stop hassling everyone for not being perfect.

Can this help you be a better leader?  YES!!!!!! Allow people to do the work you asked them to do. DOn't punish them when they do it wrong. Thank them and then encourage them to improve or show them how to do it an easier way or slightly different way. But don't go all negative on them and expect positive results. People don't respond to negativity with positive responses. You want people doing the work - thank them!!!!

How to get your spouse to do more chores around the house.

This should be obvious, but it’s worth stating. If you want someone to do something, you need to positively reinforce them when they do.

There I was, leading a discussion at a law firm about how to use operant conditioning to eliminate unwanted behavior and one of the guys asked – well – can I use this to get my wife to do more chores around the house.  His co-workers groaned, but it is a good question. One that is asked a LOT by women, who in America, still seem to be saddled with the bulk of the housework.

I seem to give a lot of advice on this topic so when I saw this cartoon – I said – YES! That will help teach the basic problem people run into. Not enough positive reinforcement!

http://fborfw.com/strip_fix/sunday-august-21-2016/

We want people to help, but then we get cranky with them when they do because, they don’t do it right. The person wanting to help is conditioned to not help because every time they do, they receive negative reinforcement which they don’t like.

This should be obvious, but it’s worth stating. If you want someone to do something, you need to positively reinforce them when they do.

I realize that to do this you have to give up some control over HOW it is done. So you have to make a choice, either accept that it won’t get done your way or stop complaining that you are the only one doing the chore.

If you want them to do it and you want them to do it your way – that will take more time. Basically – you have to do a program of successive approximation. First, positively reinforce them for doing the chore. Once they are doing it reliably, start tweaking it. Not everything at once. Once suggested change at a time and thank them and give them profuse praise and love and appreciation for making the change. Then, once that is integrated into their regularly do the chore behavior, add another tweak. Praise and integrate it before adding another tweak. Eventually – your spouse will be doing the chore the way you want it done.  Don’t want to do all this work, then stop harassing your spouse and just do it yourself.

As for the man who wanted his wife to do the dishes, yes – he admitted he would complain every time she did, because she did them a way he considered wrong.  And he couldn’t let it go.  I had to wonder if maybe his perception of what was happening was flawed. It is entirely possible that his wife had trained him – to do the dishes!

Calculated Risk & Conditioning

The blog The Dolphin Divide has some really thought provoking articles.

In an article Seth posted last January, he talks about the intersection of risk taking and conditioning.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-dolphin-divide/201601/risky-business-the-psychology-facing-danger

Risk taking, to a certain extent, is adaptive. Some individuals are more risk adverse than others, but taking risks is a survival trait – within reason.  However, our evolutionary instinct to risk isn’t all that is happening.  We are also being conditioned to take risks or not take risks.

Whenever we do something, things happen. Sometimes those things are good, sometimes bad, sometimes totally irrelevant to us. These responses to our actions make us more or less inclined to do whatever it was we did again.

However, even if we are averse to something, we can be conditioned to do it anyway and to be less averse to it.  This is done all the time in animal training and it’s used with humans to help them overcome their phobias. It’s a technique called successive approximation.  This is where you don’t ask for the behavior you want; you just keep making small incremental adjustments until the animal is doing what you want.

In the context of helping an animal/human overcome fears, you slowly and incrementally expose them to whatever it is so they are desensitized to it.  For instance, if someone is afraid of spiders, you might show them a small photo of a spider on the other side of the room and encourage them to tolerate it. Then you would make the picture ever so slightly bigger and bigger and help them acclimate to it, then you would start moving the picture closer to them – ever so slightly.


The question is – how much risk can you encourage a human or animal to take? Lots. Lethally so.

My conclusion? Fear, if it is overwhelming and irrational is counterproductive.  Being fearless is also counterproductive.  This is why the 2 following truths are both contradictory and true at the same time.

“Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.” - Peter Ustinov
&
“Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” - Mark Twain

Wisdom is not being at one extreme or the other, but in finding the right balance between the 2.

“We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space.” – Blaise Pascal

Resources for parents whose kids are being bullied

I teach how to use behavioral psychology (operant conditioning) to stop bullying and harassment. I have quite a bit of free content available if you are looking for help.

53 short video tips to stop bullying using operant conditioning - https://bullyvaccineproject.com/53bullyingtips/

2 free short courses for parents - https://bullyvaccineproject.com/how-to-talk-to-your-childs-school-so-they-will-actually-listen-and-help/

And https://bullyvaccineproject.com/what-to-do-if-your-child-is-a-bully/ (these do require signin – but it is free)

A slideshare – how to stop bullying – a guide for bystanders - http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferHancock1/how-to-stop-bullying-a-guide-for-bystanders

A free ebook - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/633104

A free course at Udemy - https://www.udemy.com/stopbullyingwithscience/

Please share and let people know there are things they can do that will actually help.

Conditioning and Choices

Humans have the ability to choose whether the conditions we find ourselves in will condition us.

I was reading Viktor Frankel’s book The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism (Touchstone Books). In one chapter he talks about how our situations condition us but that as humans we have the ability to choose whether the conditions we find ourselves in will condition us.

I wanted to share this with you because understanding how animals, including human animals are conditioned by the conditions around them helps us better choose whether or not to allow that conditioning to occur. This is why pretty much all my courses at Humanist Learning Systems are about how to manage and control behavioral conditioning so that you can recognize it when it is happening and control the process and thereby gain control over your life!

So let’s start with what conditioning is. Conditioning is a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response. To give you an example of what this mean in a practical way:  if you train a dog to sit when you say sit, you have “conditioned” it to respond this way to the stimulus of your command and you did this by reinforcing the behavior you wanted by rewarding your dog either with a treat or with love every time they sat when you said sit.

This sort of active intentional conditioning is called operant conditioning because it involves the conscious use of rewards to create a specific behavior by an operator.

However, that’s not the only way conditioning occurs. It also occurs without us knowing or intending for it to happen. For example, PTSD  - is a conditioned response to a traumatic stimulus. No one chooses to get PTSD – it happens because of our natural responses to the conditions around us.

Once you understand how these rewards and reinforcements work, you can see them happening in your own life all around you and in how you respond to what’s happening around you.  And, when you can see it, you can control it. Which is why – we humans have the ability to choose whether or not the conditions we find ourselves in condition us or not. But the only way to exercise that choice – is to be conscious you have a choice.

Knowledge and wisdom really is the key to everything.  Once you realize you have a choice, it changes everything. How you respond to interpersonal situations and how you respond to situations beyond your control.  I liken this to becoming like Neo in the movie The Matrix. It really is astounding how much control we really do have. Is that control absolute? No – but it’s still pretty powerful.

To learn more – consider taking some of my courses at Humanist Learning Systems. Specifically:

• Living Made Simpler
• Why is Change so Hard, and
• Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace

All of these courses will give you a basic understanding of how conditioning works so you can be more conscious of your choices.

Happily Married – What’s My Secret?

If you want to learn how to have a happy marriage, get your advice from someone who is happily married.

I have been happily married for over 10 years now. I don't think of marriage as a job. I think of it as an investment of my time. Time I gladly give to it because of the benefits I get from it. We've been through rough patches. What gets us through is respect for each other as individuals and a commitment to stay together even though things have been tough.

At this point, given what all we have been through - I feel REALLY secure in the relationship and I've extremely happy - despite the difficulties of our current financial situation - which can tear relationships apart - I feel like we've only gotten stronger.

Anyway - In order to have him there for me - I have to nurture him and be there for him. It's a reciprocity thing. Yeah - it's harder to do when a kid is taking up your time, but I still try to make sure I tell him regularly how much I appreciate the fact he is in my life. I don't do that for him. I do it for myself to remind myself how lucky I actually am to have him in my life so that I don't take him for granted. I don't need or expect him to reciprocate, though he usually does.

Anyway - because it's something I do for me, it doesn't feel like work. It makes me happy to remember why I married him. It makes me happy to think of how lucky I am he is in my life. It isn't work, but it is something I have to remind myself to do regularly to make it a habit.

I also take an operant conditioning approach and actively reward my hubby with good boy rewards (not sex - verbal rewards - literally - thank you for helping me) to encourage him to pay attention to and appreciate me as well. It works and no - I don't feel like I am manipulating him. It's the use of behavioral science to ensure we are both happy in the relationship.

How do you keep your marriage healthy and happy? 

The Power of Negative Attention

What to do when someone is acting badly to get your attention

If you have a child, you know that when you ignore them, like say – you are on an important telephone call, your child will try politely to get your attention and then turn to ever more drastic measures to get your attention. this is the power of negative attention.

The same thing happens with animals. Most of the time when someone comes to me with an animal behavior problem or a child behavior problem, they don’t realize that they have been positively reinforcing the negative behavior they don’t want. They don’t realize that they themselves are the problem, not their child or animal

If you want to encourage good behavior, you have to catch the animal, or your child, doing something good in the moment and reward them for the good thing they just did. the more you do this, the better their behavior comes.

If you ignore them except when they are bad, you perpetuate the bad behavior. Why? Because even negative attention is better than being ignored!

Check out this article from Counselling Resources on The Power of Negative Attention:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2010/12/07/the-power-of-negative-attention/ 

You will notice the author, Gordon Shippey, talks about the same operant conditioning dynamics I teach in my bullying book and in my humanistic parenting and management programs. He talks about extinction bursts and “ignoring” problem behavior.

But he also brings up a really important point, which is that completing the extinction protocol is REALLY hard to do. It’s much easier to train up the good behavior you want and reward the positive behavior you do want than to extinguish the bad behavior you don’t want. Both require you to control your own behavior and responses so that you can catch people being good so that you can reward them.

Don’t underestimate how much behavior, good and bad, is done just to get attention. If you want to encourage positive attention seeking behavior, you have to become more responsive to your child’s attempts to get your attention and reward them with your attention instead of forcing them to become little monsters before you give them your time.

Be present. You and your child will be happier.