You’re Parenting All Wrong (but it’s not your fault) — Part 2
Thanks for returning for Part 2 of this series. If you have not read Part 1, it’s not essential, but it may help. Either way, let’s get into it.
The Problem with Rewards and Punishment
Before we begin, let me add that there are many reasons to dislike operant conditioning as an approach to discipline. Reinforcement through rewards can be construed as bribes, leading children to behave solely for the reward and not recognize the importance of the behavior itself. Studies confirm that children who are rewarded for doing things in which they show interest become less intrinsically motivated to do those things when rewarded for the behavior (Lepper et al., 1973), a phenomenon referred to as the overjustification effect. Furthermore, a review of the evidence on over 160,000 children showed that punishment, particularly of the corporal spanking variety, failed to improve child behavior in all cases and rather increased the risk of aggression, antisocial behavior, mental health problems, impaired cognitive ability, and other detrimental outcomes (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). Punishment does not teach children new behavior, just which behaviors to avoid.
But, this article is not simply about the challenges of using operant conditioning as a form of discipline. The theory is inherently flawed in its ability to understand and change behavior. Skinner’s mistake was his reluctance to consider or care about internal mechanisms, such as thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. Most importantly, he ignored the “why” behind the behavior and relegated that answer to the inescapable consequence of reinforcement and punishment. All Skinner concerned himself with was observable behavior, and as a result, despite being able to predict behavior accurately, the holes in the theory were apparent early on.
In the 1920’s, studies on apes, for example, showed that effective behavior can occur spontaneously after a period of thought, absent any external reinforcement or punishment (Kohler, 1924), a phenomenon referred to as insight learning. Tolman (Tolman & Honzik, 1930, 1932, 1948) showed that rats could learn the layout of a maze without rewards and that learning was purposeful and goal-directed, rather than dependent on external reinforcement. Garcia and Koelling (1966) showed that animals avoided food that made them sick, even if the sickness occurred hours after ingestion and only occurred once, a double-blow for traditional principles of operant conditioning which suggest that the consequence of the behavior needs to occur close to the antecedent, as well as be repeated several times. Breland and Breland (1961, 1966) showed that many animals would rapidly alter their learned behaviors, preferring instinctual behaviors presumably purposeful in their own habitat to obtain rewards. Bolles (1970) showed a similar mechanism at work for avoidance behaviors, such that animals expressed instinctual or species-specific fright behaviors to avoid an aversive stimulus rather than merely a specific learned behavior to avoid punishment. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) showed that individuals can learn through observation alone, without personal experience with environmental consequences. Perhaps most damaging to pure behaviorism was the classic Soma cube study (Deci, 1971) and the hundreds of studies that followed. Released in 1969, the Soma cube included 7 pieces that could be used to create several 3D shapes. In the study, two groups of college students each received a Soma cube. In one group, students were offered payment for each cube design they could create, whereas in the other group, no payment was offered. After some time had passed, the experimenters told the students in each group that their time was up and would be back in 10 minutes with a questionnaire. Guess which group was more likely to continue working on the cube during the 10 minute interval? The students in the unpaid group! Students in the paid group stopped playing with the cube and read magazines. This study launched a series of research papers culminating in Self-Determination Theory. Among the suprising findings? Rewards and prizes are sometimes not only less effective than originally thought, but could actually reduce people’s motivation to engage in tasks.
So, What Drives Behavior?
In contrast to operant conditioning theory, most, if not all, levels of human behavior, personality, thoughts, and emotions can instead be understood within the context of the goals to which it is addressed (Carver & Scheier, 2001). People, animals, and even machines behave primarily for the purpose of attaining goals, and they do so in a specific way which can be described using a structure called a servomechanism, which functions to maintain a certain reference value. Within a servomechanism, three primary components exist: an evaluator, an output function, and an input function. The output function consists of the behaviors or activities of the system released onto the relevant environment, the input function perceives the environment for relevant stimuli related to maintaining the desired reference value, and the evaluator compares the reading of the input function to the goal or desired reference value and determines if a discrepancy exists. Disturbances or external events also affect the system by changing the relevant environment.
A feedback system such as the one described above can either be a discrepancy-reducing (negative feedback) system, in which the reference value is a value to maintain, or a discrepancy-enlarging system (positive feedback) where the reference value is a value to avoid. For example, imagine a thermostat set to 70 degrees with a sensor that continually measures the air temperature. If that air temperature falls below 70 degrees by a certain amount, the heat will click on. Furthermore, assuming this is a dual conditioning system, if the temperature rises above 70 degrees by a certain amount, the air conditioning will turn on. The heat or cooling output will turn off when the temperature reaches its desired set point of 70 degrees.
This simple model has been used to explain many primary functions in humans, the most commonly discussed of which are homeostatic physiological functions such as thermoregulation (shivering to increase body temperature when cold or sweating when too hot), blood glucose control (insulin release to trigger absorption of excess glucose), and body water content regulation (regulation of water concentration in urine). But, this system also provides insight into voluntary human behavior. Comparable physiological examples may be checking your own blood pressure and comparing against a normal standard to determine if medication or treatment is needed, or weighing yourself and increasing or decreasing your food intake to meet your desired weight goal. But, this system expands across the entire universe of human behavior, even explaining how people behave in relationships (Troy, 2005, Laurenceau, Troy & Carver, 2005), that is, by acting to attain desired levels of intimacy.
Before I describe how these feedback systems can be used to improve parenting, let us go back to operant conditioning for a moment. We have been led to believe that reinforcement and punishment can teach or change behavior because of these rewards and punishments, but as it turns out, that is not exactly what is happening. In fact, all the basic operant conditioning studies typically start by restricting something from the subjects that was of core importance to their quality of life and survival, most frequently food, thereby creating a discrepancy between what they want and what they have. When scientists have taken a closer look at the operant conditioning findings, it turns out that the subjects of the experiment are instead adjusting their behavior as it relates to their goals, exactly as a feedback process would predict. As early as 1939, it was found that a certain flavor of biscuit would cease to be as reinforcing to dogs if they were already sated or “full” with that flavor dog biscuit (Zener & McCurdy, 1939). This was also found with rats, who were less likely to change behavior in exchange for food, if they were already satiated (Holland and Rescorla, 1975). Animals who were salt-deprived increased the frequency of the behavior necessary for a salt reward (Krieckhaus & Wolf, 1968). The learned behaviors in these studies are likely the result of seeking to close the discrepancy between their current hungry state and a desired satiated state. Another study showed this more clearly, finding that rats taught to press a lever to obtain their food behaved in the learned manner just enough to consume about 20 to 25 grams per day, presumably their required food intake, even if it required 20 or 1000 presses for a given food pellet. Thus, while experimenters may have believed it was a certain schedule of reinforcement that was modulating this behavior, it was simply the rats eating what they needed to eat for the day to survive, regardless of the predetermined schedule the experimenter had designed.
Parenting With Purpose
Now that you have an understanding of why animals and people behave the way they do, I would like to introduce four basic principles that guide how you can use feedback systems to work with your children to improve their behavior. These represent some core changes you can consider making to your parenting style, and are just a small selection of the many possible improvements you can implement.
Principle 1. Understand Your Child’s Needs, Goals, and Motivation.
When your child acts, either positively or negatively, it is important before rushing to praise or punishment to first understand what they feel they are working toward or trying to avoid. A misbehaving child is not acting randomly without purpose or intent. To punish, scold, or criticize does nothing but divert that child to misbehave in a different way. Your goal as a parent is to understand your child first and help them meet their goals in productive ways if they are failing to do so. Are you stumped as to what your child could want? A good place to start is to examine Maslow’s (1972) hierarchy of needs, which includes basic biological needs (e.g., food), safety, love and belongingness, esteem, cognitive needs (e.g., knowledge), aesthetic needs (beauty), self-actualization (personal growth), and transcendence (e.g., helping others grow). Self-determination theory also provides some insight, suggesting that autonomy (freedom to make choices), competence (the need to have a meaningful impact and acquire skills), and relatedness (the need to connect to others). Is your child lacking power and misbehaving to get it? Is he hungry or tired? Is she interested in learning about something new? Many parents are punishing and reinforcing behaviors without paying attention to the need behind them, which gets us to Principle 2.
Principle 2: Help Your Child Pursue Goals Productively
A child does not instinctively know the mature way to feel powerful, confident, knowledgeable, loved or safe. They may act in certain ways that are defiant and disruptive to obtain these needs, and the instinct of many parents is to punish first, ask questions later. But stepping back, it’s easy to see that while the behaviors are not productive, the needs are common to all of us. Punishment is neither the solution to teach a child how to meet their needs, nor can it eliminate the need a child has that is driving their behavior. Parents need to model, show, and teach children more effective ways to get their needs met. To meet a need for power, for example, parents need to teach children skills and put them in contexts so that they can feel powerful, even with the parent, so they don’t attempt to meet this need in less appropriate ways. If they are seeking your attention to fulfill a need for love, you need to give it to them, but give it to them before they act out in ways that make you regret having children. Later, teach them the appropriate ways to seek out support and companionship.
Principle 3: Improve Your Children’s Perception of the World
To be effective, our feedback systems depend on an accurate perception of the world. If you perceive the world in a distorted way, for example, cannot feel heat, you are bound to get burned. Children’s brains are not fully developed and they may not interpret what they are experiencing in the same way you do. Their perceptions are further eroded when they are tired, hungry, in pain, or have sensory or other neurological challenges. As should be clear by now, that distortion, like a malfunctioning thermostat sensor, will wreak havoc on their ability to reach their goals and act in an appropriate or rational manner. In part, this is something you can help them with, by trying to see the world from their perspective and asking questions. But, more often than not, parenting requires a sensitivity and empathy to this distortion when you witness behavior you do not like. Try to understand it and talk about it with your child, but recognize that this may only resolve with time as your child matures.
Principle 4: Punishment and Reinforcement are at Best, Misguided, and at Worst, Harmful
This article described studies that discussed the problems with relying solely on reinforcement and punishment to guide behavior. Reinforcement is only effective in so much as it relates to helping someone attain a goal, so the better approach would be to start with understanding the goal and designing instruction around it. Furthermore, punishment has many harmful effects and doesn’t teach behavior but, instead, solely identifies which behaviors to avoid. Without an understanding of the goal to which a behavior is directed, different behavior is likely to arise elsewhere in pursuit of that same goal. Thus, any change in behavior from punishment is short-lived. Instead, model the behavior you want your child to emulate. Behaviors that the child sees as successful toward attaining their goals will be remembered.
In this article, I have presented how and why the best approach to understanding behavior is to examine one’s needs and goals. People behave in ways that help them meet those goals, and knowing what goals are driving your children’s behaviors will not only make you a better parent, but will reduce stress in your household and help your child continue to succeed as they mature.
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