You probaly already know a lot of techniques how to control and motivate yourself and how to influence others. The mechanisms of these processes have been rigorously studied in the last hundred years through experimental psychology. Read and learn how you can exploit this knowledge and use it to your advantage.
A quick test to start. How were you reinforced as a kid and how do you reinforce your child?
Choise 1. Do you give attention and praise your children when they accomplish things (e.g. “nice drawing”, “see, your effort was very productive”, etc.), and in addition, you do not overly criticize, belittle and attack them when they make mistakes (e.g. “you are a bad kid” “you cannot even tie your shoe”, “you will end up in jail one day”, etc.)?
Choise 2. Do you give attention mostly when they get injured, hurt and miserable, and do not give much attention when everything is going well?
Choise 3. Do you give attention only when they make trouble or make mistakes?
Attention = Reinforcement,
thus attention strengthen the behavior that preceeds it.
In the first scenario of the above test, you reinforce achievements and so you raise high achievers. In the second scenario, your child learn that self-pity is a useful way to get attention, love and sympathy. However, later she/he has to realize that it is not a attractive trait in adulthood. In the third case, mischief-makers cause difficulties to others and themself and may also end up in jail, indeed. Of course, the end result is much more complicated since many factors affect a child during development.
People' overt behavior are configured through classical (pavlovian) and operant conditioning, and also via modelling (observing the behavior of others).
Thoughts (= actions of the mind) are acquired and maintained in much the same manner as overt behavior, thus can be modified by any type of reinforcement or punishment that seems to have a contingent connection to them.
Our past experiences (including early childhood experiences) determine our present behavior, speech and thinking. Behaviors that received strong reinforcement for many years during childhood tend to be unchanged and hard to stop even years later when environmetal conditions change.
Pavlovian conditioning
(Ivan Pavlov experiments with dogs, 1890s) occurs when some neutral stimulus (e.g. sight of a bee) is so closely associated with an existing reflex (e.g. sting causes pain and aversion) that it takes on the power to elicit the reflexive response (e.g. sight of a bee elicits aversion).
[A reflex consists of a stimulus-response sequence, in which some stimulus (unconditioned stimulus= no need to learn) elicits a biological based response including physical and emotional response, either pleasurable or painful e.g. bee sting elicits pain and aversion, bad food elicits vomiting and aversion, good food elicit salivation and pleasure, painful blows elicit increased heart rate and fear, gentle touch elicits tranquillity.]
(suggested reading: Behavior principles in everyday life by John D. and Janice I. Baldwin)
Cues that most reliable precede and predict the onset of a relfex are the stimuli that become conditioned/learnt stimuli. If you want to better understand your feelings and emotions, play closer attention to the stimuli that precede and predicts them.
Conditioned reflexes can lose power and disappear over time (extinction), if the conditioned stimulus appears without being followed by the unconditioned stimulus and reflex („time heals old wounds”). Extinction cannot take place if the person avoids contacts with a conditioned stimuli that would neutralize it (e.g. after an accident the person avoids driving). Thus, conditioned fears and anxieties are less likely to extinguish naturally than are conditioned pleasures. Therapeutic extinctions involves having a person confront a fear-inducing conditioned stimulus in a safe environment that is free of aversive stimuli.
The pavlovian mechanism can be exploited to influence your own or others' mental states. Setting up environmental cues (e.g. image, word, imaginary, etc.), you can elicit a particular feeling in yourself or others (e.g. if you want to induce high performance put a picture of a race-winning athlete, if you want to facilitate deep thinking put a picture of Roden's thinker, or ask women's phone number in front of a flower shop that elicit romantic feelings). (suggested reading: Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini)
You can also create new associations deliberately (a.k.a. anchoring), and link together a chosen signal with a desired mental state (e.g. confidence, cheerfulness), and use this anchor cue signal (e.g. physical signal, gesture, a specific smell, music, symbol, color, etc.), when you wish to call up that emotion instantly.
The first step is to create the link between the anchor and the desired emotion. Visualize a past experience and re-live it many times (you need to feel permeated by the emotion) and at the pick apply the choosen anchor (e.g. smell, physical signal, etc.). For instance, press together thumb and index finger or clap together your palms while you are at the pick of feeling confident, or smile while you are at the pick experience of cheerfulness, or get a sniff of a smell). Repeat the process many times to create the link successfully. Later you can call up the feeling instantly with applying the anchor (e.g. pressing together the fingers, clapping together your palms, or smiling).
Operant conditioning
(Edward Thorndike experiments with cats 1898, B.F. Skinner experiments with rats and pigeons, 1938) occurs when an operant (action) is followed by either reinforcement
(positive reinforcement= receiving a reward, or negative reinforcement= escaping or avoiding a bad experience)
or punishment (positive punishment= addition of aversive stimulus, negative punishment= substraction of award), thus it strengthen or suppress that behavior. Pavlovian conditioning often occurs as a natural by-product of operant conditioning, thus performing a behavior elicit emotional responses.
It can be used to induce desired emotions „fake it until you make it”, for instance, to feel happier, smile long enough and eventually it induces a feeling of happiness; or in order to boost your self-esteem and be more confident, strike expansive poses (e.g. sit erect with hands behind the head, or stand with extended hands above your head looking upon the sky).
How parents teach wicked or useless behavior?
Some children learn to be polite early in life, if this behaviour is associated with generous levels of reinforcement over long periods of time, and later these kids feel natural to be kind to others.
The same goes for undesirable behaviors, for instance many people retain „childish behaviors”, such as whining, pouting, crying, doing self-pity, being a nuisance in adulthood. Although childish behaviors often cause parents to give their child abundant social attention and social reinforcers, immature behavior often prevents people from developing high quality relationships in their adulthood.
Children who receive frequent noncontingent reinforcement (that is receiving free rewards without doing anything that takes effort) can acquire learned laziness. Children who are showered with toys, attention, and treats by doting parents often become „spoiled”, and develop passivity, apathy, and lack of motivation.
In contrast, people who receive frequent noncontingent punishment (that is no relationship between the person's behavior and the punishment) can develop learned helplessness involving passivity, apathy, and depression. Children raised in highly abusive homes, when parents take out their anger on the children, and there is not much they can do to avoid the physical and verbal abuse, gradually, attempts to avoid punishment extinguish, and the victims learn to accept the pain passively. Once people developed learned helplessness, they often learn to tolerate abuses even when they could avoid it.
How parents teach negative thinking?
Thoughts (action of the mind) are acquired and maintained in much the same manner as overt behavior, thus can be modified by any type of reinforcement or punishment that seems to have a contingent connection to them.
If a person has often experienced trauma, failure, disappointment, or other punishers after optimistically planning for future events, the punishment can supress optimistic thinking.
Similarly, if negative thoughts and worries are reinforced (e.g. receiving sympathy), that person end up worrying all the time. Also, the production of creative thoughts can be increased through reinforcement by rewarding yourself with positive self-comments (e.g. „that was wonderful”) after noticing each clever idea.
Some children learn to escape social punishment by being self-critical and self-punitive because their behavior often reduces the likelihood that other people will punish their transgressions. (negative reinforcement=escaping a bad experience). Because escape and avoidance behavior can be very resistant to extinction, these individuals may continue to engage in self-punishing thoughts long after there is any reason to do so.
Thoughts can become conditioned stimuli through pavlovian conditioning, that can elicit conditioned responses including pleasurable or painful emotions (e.g. daydreaming or thinking of a loved one elicit pleasure; thinking of an embarrasing experience elicit discomfort).
If negative thoughts and worries elicit aversive responses, why do some people end up worrying all the time? There are several reinforcers that outweight the pain of the negative thoughts such as escaping from major problems (e.g. worrying about an exam, one plan ahead with studying hard), thus worry is a type of problem-solving behavior. Social reinforcement (e.g. receiving sympathy- positive social reinforcement) also can strengthen the habits of worrying. And finally, once these reinforcements causes a person to begin worrying, they are further reinforced by sensory stimulation (a lesser-known reinforcer) generating dozens of novel worries resulting in a long chain of thoughts.
Thoughts condition other thoughts through pavlovian conditioning, thus for instance, thoughts that precede and predict positive thoughts also become increasingly pleasurable (e.g. when you fall in love, you find that many of the things that your loved one likes also becomes more appealing to you).
Similarly, thoughts that precede and predict negative thoughts also become increasingly painful (e.g. thoughts about nuclear power elicit aversive feelings after bad experience). People who worry a great deal may inadvertently condition a large-number of once-neutral thoughts into fear eliciting conditioned stimuli (e.g. after a person has learned to be afraid of dying in an airplane accident, while worrying about the details, this person may happen to think about driving and imagine there could be a car accident, and then that person may become worrying about other kinds of travel, and eventually end up developing agoraphobia.
How to prevent the plague of irrational thoughts and worry?
Developing adequate reasoning skills is a good way to prevent the plague of irrational thoughts and fears that magnify problems. Rational decision method involves steps:
1. List as many alternative choices as feasible in a choice situation;
2. List the immediate and long-term consequences, pros (+) and cons (-) (positive and negative thoughts that comes to your mind) of each choice;
3. Then honestly evaluating all the pros and cons of each alternative, without biases.
When people do not follow the guidelines, they often focus on the immediate consequences of the most conspicuous choices, which narrows their range of choices, and they also may bias their selection in favor of immediate gratification rather than long-term planning. People who have not been reinforced for reasoning may find this task so effortful and unpleasant that they skip the evaluation process and fail to reach a well-reasoned decision.
In addition, developing self-control skills help to better manage your thoughts, moods, behaviors and habits (e.g. eating, exercise, politeness). Self-control involves
1. self-observation and self-descriptions (e.g. “I have extra weight”),
2. self-evaluation in terms of goals (e.g. “my physical fitness needs to be improved”),
3. goal-oriented self-instruction (e.g. “I start working out 3 times a week”), and
4. reinforcement (e.g. beyond feeling better you may use verbal self-reinforcement also “I am awesome and glad I resolved my fitness issues”).
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