The Introverted Detective: Conditioning people

This past week it has occurred to me that we have all been conditioned to stand on a taped "X" and inside taped boxes in stores everywhere. Basically, we have been trained. What does it mean to be conditioned? Let's dive into that.

It has to do with reward and punishment. It is how we learn, actually, so it isn't uncommon. It is the reason we obey enforced rules. When we break laws that are enforced we feel the consequences, thus we don't (usually) repeat our mistakes. It works the same way if there is an incentive to doing something consistently. For example, getting good grades and the reward of money may create a habit of working hard in school and wanting good grades. It creates good feelings when you get them after a while, reward or not.

This is why, after two months of "social distance", we distance in public places whether we agree with it or not. After long-term conditioning, we form habits that are hard to break, thus we create a new normal in our lives with every conditioned response. It scares me sometimes how easily you can play with someone's normal by conditioning a response.

The Operant

Conditioning a response is fairly simple. You reward the behavior you want and punish the behavior you don't. You can probably see how this works. One is more likely to repeat an action when they get a good response. There are two responses, respondent and operant. Respondent is automatic. Operant is a conscious action.

By removing a negative consequence or adding a positive event, you use operant conditioning for reward. Removing the positive event or adding a punishment is the opposite effect. An example of this would be a child learning to clean up their room. If they did the task well, we add a cookie reward or take away the threat of being grounded/spanked. In the opposite circumstance, we spank/ground the child and there is no cookie offered. Simple. It can also be said that an event they were looking forward to may be denied, like if they can't go to a party.

A lot of times there is reinforcement on behavior. (Keep in mind that this can be done to anyone of any age, not just children and lab rats.) It can be continuous, have a fixed rate (after x amount of response it is reinforced), fixed interval (after x amount of time), and variable fixed rate/variable interval rate (which is random). How effective is it? Well, continuous means learning quickly, but it doesn't last. Fixed ratio is steady. Fixed interval is steady, but not as sure. Anything variable is quite effective.

The Respondent or Classical

Respondent conditioning (classical conditioning) is association. For example, my soft-toothed childhood. I associate dental visits with Novacaine. This is a perfect example because it was reinforced so often I began to react to the parking lot of the dental office like a dog reacts to the vet. Speaking of dogs, they are the first example of classical conditioning. Pavlov used his dogs and food to prove classical conditioning. Any psych class you take will talk about it.

How do you condition classically? Take a neutral thing (a dental visit) and unconditioned stimuli (the feeling of numbness). For this I'm just going to break down my first example. The idea is for the idea of the neutral event or object (or even person) to cause a conditioned response (in my case, dread at the feeling of numbness). It isn't that hard of an idea. It is also scary how easily you can mess with someone in this conditioning.

This is the part where I warn all you medical professions to be personable to young children. It is shockingly easy to create a phobia in young children by being scary to them, over and over again. Heed my warning. Learn to work well with children and you will be loved, not to mention the cooperation you'll get. Scare them on accident too many times and you create fear of you, a tool you use, or your profession as a whole. The child may even do the opposite of what you say because they don't like you. So, the choice is yours. Do you want cooperation and love, or fear and spite? Be careful and good luck!

The Pros and Cons of Conditioning

I mentioned that any age or species can be conditioned. I don't care if you are a dog, cat, human, or zoo animal - you can be conditioned. Society is evidence of that all by itself. We are taught to behave a certain way while young and grow up following that lifestyle, give or take some personality and life situations we face. We are not robots, to be sure, but we do tend to follow like sheep and be conditioned.

The pros of this include raising well-disciplined children into well-rounded adults using operant conditioning. We raise our offspring using reward and punishment systems. If we let our kids run around without rules we'd have anarchy everywhere. You start young, with a kid of docile temperament, and you barely need any corporal punishment (according to my parents). This is just one example of a good use of this, but it is the best one I can think of.

The con side of this is cases of abuse and manipulation. Emotional abuse is notorious for this. People conditioned to apologize for everything are usually victims of this. Being conditioned to cope with someone's abuse means there is a blind spot in your perception. It creates unhealthy normal and unhealthy habits of second-guessing your own judgment. It often creates a habit of having to text back immediately, because the response is flack for not texting back quick enough. It takes months to bounce back, and some don't truly bounce back at all. In short, you are conditioned to appease your abuser.