Problems with Operant Conditioning and Human Behavior

Overview

The research on operant conditioning was almost exclusively done with animals- rats, pigeons, dogs, and so on. One fundamental assumption of the model was that these principles would also apply to humans. This section describes why that assumption is incorrect. Few introductory psychology textbooks deal with these problems, but they are quite real. There are a number of issues with using operant conditioning with human beings, but in general these can be categorized as ethical issues and practical issues.

I will discuss both sets of issues, but let me present my conclusions first. First, I want you to be aware of how operant conditioning works, but I want you to avoid using it with other people, especially children. There are better ways to encourage people, especially children, to act in better ways. Second, I am not saying that operant conditioning does not work, because it certainly does work. However, we have to be very very careful, because even though it can work, it often creates other problems.

Ethical Issues

The easiest way to demonstrate the ethical issues is the following thought experiment.

If you suddenly realized that your Significant Other (SO, meaning your romantic partner, spouse, boy/girlfriend) only did nice things for you when you did what she or he wanted, how would you feel? For instance, if he or she only said, “I love you” when you took out the trash.

I imagine you’d be shocked, angry, and perhaps even feel manipulated. How long, do you think, would you stay in this relationship? This scenario is the perfect metaphor for operant conditioning (OC). In operant conditioning, the reinforcer is presented after the target response. The above is a perfect example of what OC encourages people to do with children all the time. Once when I was Head Teacher at a preschool, my class of toddlers and two student teachers went on a field trip. It was near the end of the school day and we were walking back to our preschool. One girl lagged behind. Before I could stop her, one of the student teachers said to the lagging girl, “Hurry up! Your mother is waiting for you at school! You’d better come quickly; Mommy will be worried!” I found it astonishing that this student teacher would lie to manipulate her, simply to get her to walk faster. Fortunately, the mother was waiting at school, or else the child could have been very upset. Both of these scenarios demonstrate the fundamentally manipulative nature of OC. (I later spoke to the student teacher.)

The most fundamental ethical issue is the manipulation, but it is also short-sighted. While OC can be effective, it does not teach needed skills. It does not teach the skills that a child will need in life, such as bargaining, compromise, and decision-making (Marion, 2006). Researchers studying play have found that adult organized sports (Little League, Teeball, etc) fail to do much more than provide exercise (Berk, 2012). By contrast, child-organized games, where children create the game, decide on the rules, and enforce them, improve moral development, critical thinking skills, bargaining, and compromise (Berk, 2012). This difference is due to who makes the decisions. In sports- the adults set the rules, decide who plays and where, and officiate. The children are perpetually followers. In child-organized games, the children do all of those tasks themselves, and they learn by doing them. Along those same lines, the people in power do the same thing in an OC situation as those adults do in Little League. For example, school rules are generally imposed on a child. Certainly, the child has no opportunity to discuss the rules, consider why they exist, or modify them.

Practical Issues

Most of the problems with OC deal with the fact that it often does not achieve the desired goal. These practical issues relate to OC being unable to create lasting behavior change, causing sometimes the opposite effect from what is desired, and causing problems in the long run.

No Lasting Behavior Change

Approaches that use OC often fail to create lasting behavior change. For instance, if you worked at a store, and one day your boss told you that while he loved your work, and thought you were his most valuable employee, he was not going to be able to pay you anymore. He still wanted you to continue working, however. Would you continue to work? If you’re like all but two or three of the hundreds of students I’ve asked that question, the answer is categorically, “No!” In fancy behavioral terms, the behavior does not maintain after the period of reinforcement is ended. Essentially, a person learns to behave in order to get the reinforcer or avoid the punishments, when in a system using OC. When those reinforcements stop, so does the behavior. So the adolescent who studied, achieved, and cleaned his room because of parent-enforced OC is likely to go to college and go wild. The parents and their punishments are absent, so he parties all the time, doesn’t study, and eventually fails out. I’ve seen many students in my classes who lived this situation- they started out at a 4-year university, couldn’t regulate themselves, failed out, and are now living at home again and taking classes at my community college.

A related situation also fails to create behavior change. This situation applies to many cases with children. For example, they read only as long as they can still get free pizza from Pizza Hut (the Pizza Hut “Bookit” program); they clean their rooms only as long as they are paid for it, and so on. Consider what happens in a classroom when a substitute appears. Frequently, a “well-behaved” class will go wild when the teacher is absent and a substitute teacher fills in for her/him. The children (most of them, anyway) have learned to behave in order to get the reinforcement from the teacher, not because the behaviors the teacher reinforces (eg- waiting your turn, listening when others are talking) are important social skills needed for life. The children learn to behave for the reinforcer, but don’t learn to value the behaviors themselves. In fancy terms, they fail to “internalize” the rules. In essence, they never learn why to behave. You can see this on the highway every day. Few people have internalized the laws about speed limits, so they speed most of the time, and only drive the speed limit in the presence of a police cruiser. At a speed trap, traffic on a highway slows down dramatically as people notice the officer, and speed up again after they have gone past the officer’s cruiser. The punishment (a speeding ticket) only generates compliance in the presence of the punishing agent!

Causing the Opposite Effect

Sometimes OC can create the opposite effect than was intended. Generally this problem happens when the adult (or other person providing the reinforcement) does not look clearly at the situation, or does not understand OC. For instance, how often have you seen this situation occur- a child in a classroom is acting out, and the teacher yells at him/her to stop whatever behavior it is. The child stops the behavior briefly, but soon is right back at it again. Often the child is now doing more of the behavior! The child may have many reasons for this behavior- looking for attention, looking to increase his popularity with the other children, or even acting in a way (unconsciously) to confirm a negative belief about him- or herself! A child (or adult) who has been told something negative (that he or she is “stupid” or a “numbskull” for example) often will act to confirm that description! Family systems therapists see this as taking a role within the family. A child who is seen by the family as the “bad child” will take on that “role” and act badly, because that is what is expected! I saw this once- a student blatantly cheated on a test, and her mother came to see me about it. In the course of the conversation, the mother could not believe that her child had cheated, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. She finally said to me, “I can’t believe my daughter did this! Now, my son, I would completely believe he would cheat.” It seemed pretty obvious to me that the student in my class was the “good child” who could do no wrong, and the son was the “bad child.” In any case, those beliefs that a child (or adult) has about her- or himself can have much more of an effect than the rewards and punishments offered by someone in authority.

Causing Problems in the Long Run

Similarly, OC can create behaviors that no one wants to have happen. For instance, children who are told to eat their vegetables in order to get dessert tend to like the desserts more and the vegetables even less than they did at the start (Berk, 2012). So the parent, while trying to do a good thing, actually undermines the good they were trying to create. The problem is that people think, and they think “Wow, these vegetables must be terrible if they have to bribe me to eat them” or something like that. Along those lines I once heard of a problem at a day care. Administrators at the day care prohibited staff from hugging and touching the children out of concerns about child abuse. However, if the child was acting out, then the staff was to wrap themselves around the child in order to get them calm and prevent them harming other children. Afterwards, children began to act out more and more. They had learned that the way to get touched by people important to them was to act out. Not exactly what the administrators envisioned. L

There is one last problem I’d like to mention. This is called the “coercive process” as described by Marian Marion (2003). Marion describes this as a situation where each person is reinforced for acting in a negative, aggressive way. So for instance, one child hits another, so the second child hits back. This interaction increases in intensity as each child wants to get the other one back. An adult then gets involved and acts aggressively also, perhaps by yelling at the children or spanking them. The children stop for a brief time, causing the adult to feel justified (and negatively reinforced) for acting aggressively. But the adult, in acting aggressively, serves as a model to teach the children that aggression is a way to solve problems. In time, the children, their beliefs in aggression strengthened, will act aggressively again, likely with more intensity. The adult, having been reinforced for acting aggressively before, will again intervene aggressively. Unfortunately, the adult never gets at the cause of the aggression in the first place. One child may resent (and resist) being “bossed” by the other child, or one child may feel jealous of the other for some reason. These issues go unresolved, and the aggression continues with no end in sight.

Conclusions

All of these problems illustrate one point- there are aspects of the person which are far more powerful than any sort of external reinforcer or punishment. We have to take the person and her or his interests, abilities, beliefs, and so on into account when we want to motivate them.

It is much better to engage with a child (or adult) and explain why a rule or behavior is needed than to simply impose it from “on high.” Experimental high schools which give the students much more control over creating school rules and responsibility for enforcing those rules have far fewer discipline problems than “regular” schools, for example.

To learn more about engaging with children, look up “positive discipline” online or read Marian Marion’s book on child guidance, listed in the References below. Generally, the idea is to take a child’s abilities and interests into account, explain why rules are needed, get them involved in meaningful ways, and in general treat them like people with dignity.

References/Further Reading

Berk, L. E. (2012). Infants, Children, and Adolescents, 7^th Ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon

Kohn, A. (2001). Five reasons to stop saying “good job” Young Children, 56, 5, 24-28.

Kohn, A. (1999.) Punished by Rewards, 2^nd Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Kohn, A. (1996). Beyond Discipline. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Marion, M. (2003) Guidance of Young Children, 6^th Ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merril.

The content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License except for any elements that may be licensed differently. The content of this page includes:

Problems with Operant Conditioning and Human Behavior was created by Glenn E. Bert Fox, Jr., Ph.D. under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License
Original content contributed by Lumen Learning

If you believe that a portion of this Open Course Framework infringes another's copyright, contact us.