Thursday, November 29, 2018
Side gigs part 1, or...
The power of your alarm clock.
A Bachelors in Psychology is either one of the most useful or least useful college degrees available, but there's no middle ground. On the one hand, it's probably the best degree to prepare you for grad school. You have to write lots research papers, and follow the APA style for all that work, so you'd be familiar with the requirement of citation when working on your advanced degree. Not citing others' work properly can result in a plagiarism charge, causing you to fail the assignment, or the class, or even get expelled from college all together. On the other hand, as an end unto itself, it's all but impossible to get a good job in the field with just a B.A. You could work for a rehab at $11 an hour, or you could work at Starbucks at $10.50 an hour plus tips, not to mention free coffee and no one screaming for medication. I chose the latter. If you don't count financial aid (and the connection is tenuous at best), I've never actually worked in the mental health industry, though for both of my collegiate positions, a Bachelors in Psych fulfilled a minimum educational requirement.
Outside of poor employment prospects and learning how to write papers that don't get you kicked out of school, I did enjoy my program. Psychology majors are notoriously conflicted, and we try to fix ourselves through our classes. I count myself as one of this troop, even as I chose my degree at random. I really wanted to be a physical therapist.
Despite the need for insight into my problems, I ended up immersed in the hard-science side of the field, studying Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology, and the more general field of Behaviorism. To the extent possible, each attempts to be empirical, relying on measurable, observable data, rather than discussing feelings, like how you were rendered permanently incapable of love because you couldn't get a puppy at age 9. As was typical for me, I stumbled into both, and while I would have preferred other courses, I'm glad I ended up in those subjects. The I/O class was my senior thesis, putting me on the path to my M.S.in HR Management and financial aid, while Intro to Behaviorism formed the backbone to my understanding why people act the way they do. It's also highly reductionist, assuming people are slaves to their basest urges, so the downside of this approach is cynicism and misanthropy, but it was the early to mid 90's, so it felt appropriate.
The central tenet of behaviorism is the understanding that creatures seek out positive stimuli, and seek to avoid negative stimuli. The process of learning how to get or avoid these stimuli is called operant conditioning. This can then be used to influence one's actions. If you wish to increase a certain behavior, you reward it, and if you wish to decrease a certain behavior, you punish it.
Rewarding a behavior is called reinforcement, and has two categories: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is adding a pleasurable stimulus as a result of a specific behavior. The type of reward is further divided in two: primary reinforcers, and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers are things that we need to survive: food, water, sex, and anything else that is required for survival and is not dependent on one's culture. These should motivate the subject, but the effectiveness varies. The typical example is a rat learning to push a bar to get a food pellet. Here's the variable: the rat may not be hungry, so it would ignore the bar until it wants something to eat. When the rat is full, the bar is ignored all over again.
Secondary reinforcers have value tailored to the individual. Without that context, it isn't a reward. Money is a common example. For it to motivate you action, you had to have learned that money allows to gain something else: food, shelter, etc. If I don't see that relationship, or I don't value it, the money won't motivate me. Cash means nothing when you're stranded on an island or it's a type of currency you can't spend. Praise is another potential secondary motivator, but if I don't care about the person giving out the accolades, it means nothing. If I dislike the person, I may consider it punishment and stop what I was doing. You can imagine the importance of this dynamic in family therapy.
Negative reinforcement (with force as the key word in this phrase) works in an entirely different way: a behavior is increased to remove an undesired stimulus. The alarm clock mentioned above forces you to get up and turn it off, with the hope you'll actually begin your day rather than going back to bed. Of course, you could take the clock, or your phone, or whatever else is trying to wake you up, and throw it across the room, up to and including the family cat, engaging it its own operant conditioning: if I want to get fed, I need to wake up this larger cat by sitting on his face, purring, and meowing - loudly. Whatever action you take, you're trying to gain the benefit of removing the obnoxious sound blasting your ears. Let's hope, for your kitty's sake, you decide to just open up the bag of Meow Mix.
Negative reinforcement is often confused with punishment, but the two are not the same. The behavior has to be observable and measurable to the extent possible, so the rule is if an action is completed specifically in an effort to avoid or stop something that is already occurring or is expected to occur, that's negative reinforcement. If an action is removed, punishment is in effect. Stopping at a red light is avoiding punishment. You were speeding down the lane, and you ceased doing that. Why? You got a ticket in the past, and cost was so high, you'd rather not get another one. What both do share is that each is unpleasant.
When utilizing negative reinforcement, regardless of the circumstances, the person applying the negative stimulus should also try to present a more positive coupling with the desired behavior. Let's go back to our morning wake-up call. The clock may have forced you get up earlier than you'd want, but because you complied, you were able to have a cup of coffee at home, avoided traffic, and got to your desk before the boss, so you looked and felt better than if you ignored the alarm. Are all these benefits enough to motivate you to wake up on time again the next day? Maybe. Because these rewards are secondary reinforcers (save the coffee), it depends on you, the individual. You may still need the alarm to tell you it's time to get up, but instead of being stressed, you're happy at the reasonable expectation of a good start to the day and promptly head to work - or not, and go grab a second cup of coffee instead.
That which you're trying to avoid doesn't have to be something physical, like noise or hunger. The negative stimulus can be purely psychological: threats can, and will, get you to move, depending on the immediacy of the consequences. For instance, if you and your fiance begin the process of searching for a new home, you may feel angst at the thought of not having enough money to make this happen or being so over-extended after the purchase, that you worry you won't be able make your bills. While this can be stressful, if it's merely theoretical, it will have little to no force behind it. As the prospect of buying a place (and in turn, having to sell yours) becomes more real and immediate, so do the potential negative outcomes if you don't start making adjustments. Fearing those consequences, you cut your extraneous spending. This same fear also motivates you tally a new budget, only to find thrift may not be enough. You need more money coming into the household, but how? Let's say that you've been trying to answer that question for 13 years, 9 months, and 15 days. If, while trying to answer that question during that period, you've collected a mountain of information, developed skills, and taken classes, any and all of which could have resulted in a new source of income at any point in time, but you haven't done anything - yet. Which do you choose? As it turns out, I took out my phone and turned on the Lyft driver app for the first time.
A Bachelors in Psychology is either one of the most useful or least useful college degrees available, but there's no middle ground. On the one hand, it's probably the best degree to prepare you for grad school. You have to write lots research papers, and follow the APA style for all that work, so you'd be familiar with the requirement of citation when working on your advanced degree. Not citing others' work properly can result in a plagiarism charge, causing you to fail the assignment, or the class, or even get expelled from college all together. On the other hand, as an end unto itself, it's all but impossible to get a good job in the field with just a B.A. You could work for a rehab at $11 an hour, or you could work at Starbucks at $10.50 an hour plus tips, not to mention free coffee and no one screaming for medication. I chose the latter. If you don't count financial aid (and the connection is tenuous at best), I've never actually worked in the mental health industry, though for both of my collegiate positions, a Bachelors in Psych fulfilled a minimum educational requirement.
Outside of poor employment prospects and learning how to write papers that don't get you kicked out of school, I did enjoy my program. Psychology majors are notoriously conflicted, and we try to fix ourselves through our classes. I count myself as one of this troop, even as I chose my degree at random. I really wanted to be a physical therapist.
Despite the need for insight into my problems, I ended up immersed in the hard-science side of the field, studying Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology, and the more general field of Behaviorism. To the extent possible, each attempts to be empirical, relying on measurable, observable data, rather than discussing feelings, like how you were rendered permanently incapable of love because you couldn't get a puppy at age 9. As was typical for me, I stumbled into both, and while I would have preferred other courses, I'm glad I ended up in those subjects. The I/O class was my senior thesis, putting me on the path to my M.S.in HR Management and financial aid, while Intro to Behaviorism formed the backbone to my understanding why people act the way they do. It's also highly reductionist, assuming people are slaves to their basest urges, so the downside of this approach is cynicism and misanthropy, but it was the early to mid 90's, so it felt appropriate.
The central tenet of behaviorism is the understanding that creatures seek out positive stimuli, and seek to avoid negative stimuli. The process of learning how to get or avoid these stimuli is called operant conditioning. This can then be used to influence one's actions. If you wish to increase a certain behavior, you reward it, and if you wish to decrease a certain behavior, you punish it.
Rewarding a behavior is called reinforcement, and has two categories: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is adding a pleasurable stimulus as a result of a specific behavior. The type of reward is further divided in two: primary reinforcers, and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers are things that we need to survive: food, water, sex, and anything else that is required for survival and is not dependent on one's culture. These should motivate the subject, but the effectiveness varies. The typical example is a rat learning to push a bar to get a food pellet. Here's the variable: the rat may not be hungry, so it would ignore the bar until it wants something to eat. When the rat is full, the bar is ignored all over again.
Secondary reinforcers have value tailored to the individual. Without that context, it isn't a reward. Money is a common example. For it to motivate you action, you had to have learned that money allows to gain something else: food, shelter, etc. If I don't see that relationship, or I don't value it, the money won't motivate me. Cash means nothing when you're stranded on an island or it's a type of currency you can't spend. Praise is another potential secondary motivator, but if I don't care about the person giving out the accolades, it means nothing. If I dislike the person, I may consider it punishment and stop what I was doing. You can imagine the importance of this dynamic in family therapy.
Negative reinforcement (with force as the key word in this phrase) works in an entirely different way: a behavior is increased to remove an undesired stimulus. The alarm clock mentioned above forces you to get up and turn it off, with the hope you'll actually begin your day rather than going back to bed. Of course, you could take the clock, or your phone, or whatever else is trying to wake you up, and throw it across the room, up to and including the family cat, engaging it its own operant conditioning: if I want to get fed, I need to wake up this larger cat by sitting on his face, purring, and meowing - loudly. Whatever action you take, you're trying to gain the benefit of removing the obnoxious sound blasting your ears. Let's hope, for your kitty's sake, you decide to just open up the bag of Meow Mix.
Negative reinforcement is often confused with punishment, but the two are not the same. The behavior has to be observable and measurable to the extent possible, so the rule is if an action is completed specifically in an effort to avoid or stop something that is already occurring or is expected to occur, that's negative reinforcement. If an action is removed, punishment is in effect. Stopping at a red light is avoiding punishment. You were speeding down the lane, and you ceased doing that. Why? You got a ticket in the past, and cost was so high, you'd rather not get another one. What both do share is that each is unpleasant.
When utilizing negative reinforcement, regardless of the circumstances, the person applying the negative stimulus should also try to present a more positive coupling with the desired behavior. Let's go back to our morning wake-up call. The clock may have forced you get up earlier than you'd want, but because you complied, you were able to have a cup of coffee at home, avoided traffic, and got to your desk before the boss, so you looked and felt better than if you ignored the alarm. Are all these benefits enough to motivate you to wake up on time again the next day? Maybe. Because these rewards are secondary reinforcers (save the coffee), it depends on you, the individual. You may still need the alarm to tell you it's time to get up, but instead of being stressed, you're happy at the reasonable expectation of a good start to the day and promptly head to work - or not, and go grab a second cup of coffee instead.
That which you're trying to avoid doesn't have to be something physical, like noise or hunger. The negative stimulus can be purely psychological: threats can, and will, get you to move, depending on the immediacy of the consequences. For instance, if you and your fiance begin the process of searching for a new home, you may feel angst at the thought of not having enough money to make this happen or being so over-extended after the purchase, that you worry you won't be able make your bills. While this can be stressful, if it's merely theoretical, it will have little to no force behind it. As the prospect of buying a place (and in turn, having to sell yours) becomes more real and immediate, so do the potential negative outcomes if you don't start making adjustments. Fearing those consequences, you cut your extraneous spending. This same fear also motivates you tally a new budget, only to find thrift may not be enough. You need more money coming into the household, but how? Let's say that you've been trying to answer that question for 13 years, 9 months, and 15 days. If, while trying to answer that question during that period, you've collected a mountain of information, developed skills, and taken classes, any and all of which could have resulted in a new source of income at any point in time, but you haven't done anything - yet. Which do you choose? As it turns out, I took out my phone and turned on the Lyft driver app for the first time.
