Controlling Responses

• Physical Restraint: you physically manipulate the environment to prevent the occurrence of some problem behavior

  • covering nails with bandaids

  • removing access to cell phone while studying

  • deleting social media from phone

• Depriving and Satiating: deprive/satiate yourself, thereby altering the extent to which a certain event can act as a reinforcer

  • no naps during the day so you sleep longer at night

• Doing Something Else: performing an alternate behavior

  • no use of any distraction in the bed - only used for sleeping

  • no using phone in bed - may not use it while lying down

• Self-Reinforcement and Self-Punishment

Risks of using Self-Control

• if other people are aware of your plan (social consequence) you are more likely to complete your goal

Self-Control

• Skinner on Self-Control

  • self control is not willpower but conflicting outcomes

  • two types of responses:

    • controlling response alters frequency of controlled response

    • physical restraint manipulates environment to prevent occurrence

  • depriving and satiating: utilize motivating operations of deprivation and satiation to alter extent to which certain event can act as reinforcer

  • doing something else: prevent engaging in certain behaviors by performing alternate behavior

  • self-reinforcement and self-punishment: reinforce your own behavior. less likely to produce consequences for yourself; use social consequences to keep accountable

• Self-Control as a Temporal Issue

  • behavior more heavily influenced by immediate consequences rather than delayed ones

  • later consequences are less certain than sooner consequences

  • delay of gratification: choosing a larger later reward over smaller sooner reward VS

  • impulsiveness: choosing smaller sooner over larger later reward

• Mischel’s Delay of Gratification Paradigm

  • extent to which children avoided paying attention to reward had significant effect on their resistance to temptation

  • manner in which children thought about rewards made a difference

  • children who devised tactics enabling them to wait for preferred reward were, at 17, more cognitively and socially competent

• Ainslie-Rachlin Model of Self-Control

  • preference between smaller sooner / larger later rewards can shift over time

    • get less impulsive when you get older

    • grand plans at night and give up by next day

  • value of reward increases more sharply as delay decreases / reward become imminent

    • graduating hs - reward was greater senior yr than it was freshman yr

  • some of us can delay gratification better than others

    • innate differences in impulsivity

    • individual differences in impulsivity

    • less impulsive after experience

    • availability of other reinforcement reduces impulsiveness

    • maintain responding for distant goal by setting up explicit series of subgoals

  • make a commitment (precommitment) response

    • carried out at early point in time

    • serves either to eliminate or greatly reduce the value of upcoming temptation

    • behavioral contract

• Small-but-Cumulative Effects Model

  • each individual choice on self-control task has small but cumulative effect on our likelihood of obtaining desired long-term outcome; helps explain who self-control is difficult

  • to improve self-control:

    • make salient that individual choices are not isolated events, but rather parts of a whole

    • have a relapse prevention plan

    • establish rules that clearly distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors

• Is self-control a limited resource?

  • ego-depletion model says yes

    • cognitive load is a related concept