The power of positive reinforcement

My daughter is not a fan of reading.  She will do a math workbook for hours, but she will not sit down and read a chapter book.  Understanding the benefits of reading, I try to get her to read a little every night.  During the school year she is given monthly goals for the Book-It program.  Being super competitive, she always made her goal.  Now that it is summer, she has no desire to read.  What’s in it for her in the summer?  She has no classmates to compete against.  I have tried to increase her desire to read by buying books she is interested in, about topics she loves, etc.  They all sit on her book shelf gathering dust.  So after learning about reinforcement in this class, I decided to try this:     

I decided to experiment on my 9 year old daughter with a rate of reinforcement increase to test if her production would increase.  I gave her a minimum goal of 80 minutes of reading.  If she read 180 minutes, she would be able to choose the movie (with no arguments) for family movie night.  At 100 minutes, I would camp out with her on Saturday night.  For 120, she was allowed to have a sleepover.  And for a whopping 140 minutes of reading during the week she was granted ALL 3 incentives.  I cannot believe it worked as well as it did.  Mind you, she read not one minute more than 140 minutes, but she did it!  She choose the higher rate of reinforcement; melioration. 

I understand that with the contrast effect, the motivation impact these incentives have right now will lose their appeal in time.  I can either hope it continues to work through to September when school starts again, or I will need to change the stakes to keep it interesting.  I am just happy she got in some reading this summer!               

Due Dates

     I decided to take 3 summer classes this summer semester because I wanted to be able to graduate with a minor in economics. The first two summer classes gave me due dates several times a week and they were due at a specific time during the day. When I got the e-mail and syllabus for this class, Motivation, I noticed that ALL work was due by the end of the semester. I silently cheered a bit knowing I was not going to spend several days a week attached to my computer. It was nice knowing that I did not have to hand in something weekly and if I was in the mood to procrastinate, I could. When reading the lecture about incentives, I came across the slide about procrastination. It had me thinking how fitting it was to have an "end” due date for all the work in a class that is called “motivation”. 
    According to the slides, procrastination refers to a delay in the goal-directed behavior despite knowing that one will be worse off as a result. In the beginning of the semester when I noticed how awesome it would be to slack off each week, I realized that it felt like a “test” to me. I felt like I was being tested on my ability to stay motivated in a class that was all about motivation. This gave me both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for this class. I was intrinsically motivated due to my own pleasure of doing well in the class and the pleasure of my hard work paying off and extrinsically motivated by the grades I received and also the dates the professor saw me complete my work. It’s a silly thought that I assumed based on the syllabus, but it is working for me. I have set goals each week that I hope to complete my summer work by and if something comes up, I try not to let it put me too far in the hole and be far behind in my work. I like to believe I do not procrastinate too much, however, this was a nice test of my ability to stay motivated and focus on external and internal goals. This is the first time I’ve had a class that had all the homework, quizzes, discussions, and papers due all by the end of the semester. 
    Now, 10 or so days left of the class, I feel like many others may have procrastinated all semester and have not even opened Endurance yet. They are probably rushing to get any grade at all for the mid-term and final. I felt like I have paced myself appropriately and my grades will hopefully reflect my hard work at staying motivated this entire semester.  It's funny to me how I continued to stay motivated throughout this course so I could show the professor that I was not a procrastinator. This class has also shown me my external and internal motivations for specific things in my life. 

The Power of Habit Book Report

 The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is a book which seeks to answer the questions: “Why do we do what we do?” and “How can we change what we do?” Habits, at their very basic, are a loop containing a cue, a routine, and a reward. This loop is propelled by a craving for the reward. Once this basic habit loop can be understood, it can be manipulated to achieve desired results such as weight loss, smoking or nail biting cessation, tooth brushing, as well as more complicated behavior patterns. 

Duhigg explains the far-reaching effects that habits have on individuals, companies, and societies as a whole through a series of case study-like anecdotes that all essential boil down to different habit loops. Each loop contains the cue, the routine, and the reward, as well as a craving that moves the loop along. These anecdotes serve as relatable examples of how habits reign in our own lives, how companies (like Target) seek to take advantage of them and even change them, and how habits can be an avenue for social change, as they were in the Civil Rights Movement.
 

Personally, my favorite part of the book was the discussion about whether or not we are in control of our habits. I found that I had a very strong opinion on this. In this chapter of the book, entitled “The Neurology of Free Will: Are We Responsible for Our Habits?” tells the stories of two very different people who fell prey to their habits. The first story is about a woman who begins gambling and develops a habit. She eventually ends up gambling away a large inheritance and is taken to court by her creditors. The second story is of a man who also ends up on trial, but for a much more serious reason. A lifelong sleepwalker, the man strangled his wife while he was asleep, believing her to be a man who had broken in and was trying to hurt his wife. Both had fallen victim to habits—one to a gambling habit, the other to a much more primal habit of survival and protecting loved ones. Both argued in court that they should not be held responsible for their actions because these actions where automatic and not in their control. The gambler was ultimately held legally and financially responsible for her situation. The sleepwalker was not. Duhigg raises the question—why is one excused and the other not? I felt very strongly that the science behind sleep terrors (what the man was in the midst of when he killed his wife) exonerates him. Although the brain activity of acting out a gambling habit is similar to the automaticism of survival habits, there are parts of the brain (those that should be reasoning about how much to gamble) that are not literally asleep. She is working with more than survival instincts at the blackjack table. The process of developing that habit and the obvious triggers of rewards and behaviors could have been controlled and weren’t.

Rewards and reinforcements are major factors in habit development. The reward is a staple of the basic habit loop. Without consistent rewards, a habit will not form, and a formed habit will disappear (albeit temporarily) when a reward disappears. Without the motivation to repeat a certain action over and over, there is no habit.

This book has been very helpful to me personally. It has illuminated a lot of what happens in my apartment. My husband Rob and I always talk about how our brains work differently, and after reading this book I am convinced that it is not the fundamental functioning that is different, but rather the habits that we have formed over the course of our lives. From what I have learned reading this book, I think the most fundamental difference between us is what we find “rewarding,” because this can differ greatly between people. I think the feeling of being organized and having things clean feels amazing. Rob could not care less. I don’t pay the electric bill so it doesn’t matter to me how much it is. Rob pays it and finds lower numbers more bearable and therefore rewarding. Here just a few examples of different habits I have found around my home:

My (lack of) habit, and his habit. His reward is feeling secure. I don't think anyone is going to break in so I have a hard time remembering.
Cue: locking the deadbolt
Routine: nothing/putting the chain on
Reward: nothing/sense of security

His habit, my lack thereof again. He doesn't want mold to accumulate. I just wash it when it does. 
Cue: Finishing a shower
Routine: pull the curtain closed behind you/nothing
Reward: don't have to worry about mold/don't have to do any more "work"

His habit for turning lights off, mine for turning them on. He pays the electric bill. 
Cue: walking into/out of a room
Routine: TURN ON ALL THE THINGS!/Turn them off
Reward: Light/lower electric bill

My habit of keeping an organized work space, his habit of using his desk as a place to put things and not a work space.
Cue: sitting at desk trying to work/the desk is there
Routine: clean it before work can begin/put stuff on it
Reward: I can focus/stuff is out of Rachel's way

This is an interesting one to me: I have a habit of putting things "in their proper place" like on a shelf, in a box, or filed away. My husband also has a habit, but it is of making multiple neat piles of things side by side. When I go over to his parents' house, I see neat stacks of things all over, so I see that he comes by this honestly.
Cue: Things need to get put somewhere
Routine: Place it in a pile/put it on a shelf
Reward: Things feel organized

Our shared habit of never putting our shoes in the closet...
Cue: walk in the front door
Routine: Take shoes off where all the other shoes are
Reward: Foot freedom.

 None of these habits are necessarily bad, since habits mostly have to do with what we find rewarding. To use the shower curtain as an example, I don't care about the possible accumulation of mold, but I do find that having the shower curtain always pulled closed is visually appealing (rewarding) to me, so I have started to also get into the habit of closing it. 

The ability to notice and understand your habits is a very powerful tool, especially when you are trying to change those habits into "better" behaviors. For me, this awareness has given me greater understanding and more patience for the everyday differences between people's habits. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their understanding of how people function and how deliberate change can be accomplished.

The Power of Habit & Food Preferences

(The second book I picked to read is so good and full of information, I felt the need explore the concept of a habit loop in further detail than just in the book report.)

The opening chapter of “The Power of Habit” begins with a gentlemen named Eugene who suffered memory loss due to an illness. He was able to learn habits unconsciously even though consciously he could not remember how he was doing these tasks. The chapter continued discussing that when something is done routinely, you begin to form a three-step loop that is triggered when the see the objects or cues associated with this task.

I never realized how many habits we have daily until I was required to read this book and found myself enjoying the read. There are good and bad habits, and the cues and rewards for both are the reason habits are so hard to break. One of the habits the book talked about is backing out of the driveway when you first began to drive. This example hit home for me because I was such a bad driver when I first began to drive that my radio needed to be turned off and I was constantly stepping on the break every inch I moved down my driveway. I was constantly worried I would hit a car, run off the driveway, hit a child, go too fast down the driveway I could not stop my car, etc.  I am now into my 6th year of driving and now when I back out of the driveway I do it with fewer thoughts running through my mind and my brain “stops fully participating in decision-making” due to a habit emerging. I make sure there are no cars or children in the way, but they are no longer worries like they use to be. 

The biggest habit I have been trying to re-work is eating healthy. I have been regularly working out and lifting for several months, but I do not see the results I want due to the unhealthy eating habits I have. I work 50 hour work weeks, take three summer classes, and go to the gym 6 days a week. I do not WANT to make time to meal prep a salad I know I won’t enjoy as much as pizza or fries. This could be explained by food preferences. Since pizza or fries has higher calories than a bowl of lettuce or carrots, it makes sense that it is preferred over the lower energy content.  In order to form a new habit, you must overrule the previous habit with a new routine. This has inspired me to try to come up with a new routine that will be followed by the same cue and the same reward as the old routine. 

Pairings That Are Easy on the Eyes

(Excuse me for talking about my husband again. I'm basically obsessed with him)

My husband and I often get told that we are a very "cute" couple, even though we're not particularly affectionate in public. It seems to be based on what we look like. Just yesterday, someone mentioned it again, and he and I happened to be dressed very similarly. We had just come from the gym and were wearing black t-shirts with lettering, black exercise pants, Birkenstocks, and Fitbits. This was just a weird coincidence, but I began to wonder if people see couples who look like they "match" and automatically think that is a good pairing. I wonder if people are automatically rating the attractiveness of each person, and if the numbers match according to their perceptions, then the pairing makes sense, and is easy to digest and look at favorably.

In the video from The Science of Sex Appeal it shows how people do this when they are trying to find partners/mates. In the real world it certainly doesn't occur so consciously, but people are aware of who's "out of their league" or when they think they could do better. I don't remember having this specific thought process, but I can admit to being shallow enough that I wouldn't have pursued my husband if I hadn't thought he was attractive, and I probably would have been intimidated if I thought he was out of my league. Based on the concepts presented in the video and lecture, I think we are relatively well-matched in many different aspects. It's something I take comfort in, and it's one of the reasons I never like to be over- or under-dressed compared to my husband. I don't like the mismatch.

The Diet Cliche

My husband and I are currently on a diet, and he has been a lot more successful than I. This is partly due to facts of the situation: 1) he has more weight to lose, and 2) he is male. However, the material I've come across in this course leads me to believe he as another advantage: he is intrinsically motivated. He wants to sleep better. He wants to wear nicer, better-fitting clothes. He wants his feet to hurt less when he walks for extended periods of time. These are all things that he wants to control about himself and for himself (effectance motivation). As for me, I haven't found that intrinsic motivation. I am doing this diet because I am trying to be helpful and supportive. Because I am not buying in 100%, it is not working as well for me and I want to quit. I feel like my opportunity costs of doing this diet are higher because I do most of the cooking and dishes, in addition to having a job and going to school. My husband certainly works hard, but he is not in school and does not do most of the cooking. Doing this diet is easier for him because he has intrinsic motivation as well as low opportunity costs. For me, I need some way to change my motivation in order to ultimately be successful.

Thoughts on the Barry Schwartz video

When Barry Schwartz discusses maximizing individual freedom with offering maximum available choices to consumers, he makes great points, mentioning how things were in the past compared to today.  There are obviously many more choices today.  Is that always good though?  In my opinion, along with Mr. Schwartz, it isn’t always for the best.  For instance, his example of making choices at your kid’s soccer game, and the paralysis people can get when offered too many choices. 

For example, when Mr. Schwartz discusses the study of 401k decision-making, I could absolutely relate.  At age 21 when I was first eligible for my company’s 401k plan, I was uneducated on the subject or how to get help on it.  I put it off for years!  As another example, as I age, I can more and more relate to the problems of escalation of expectation, especially with technology.  I feel so out of the loop with all the choices we are offered with laptops, internet options, cell phones, etc.  I also agree with Mr. Schwartz on it being easier to regret personal choices with the more options available.  I “could have done better” happens all the time in all of us.  We have all these options that offer great benefits.  When we settle for what we can afford or have the time for, we cannot help but think that there is something better that we could have had. 

Lastly, I would like to mention that I am also able to relate with the negative effects of patient autonomy.  My recent health had provided me with the opportunity for both back and foot surgery.  These procedures are not needed for my survival; therefore the decision lies completely on me as to whether I should go through with it.  Both doctors told me “if you can live with the pain, then you may not feel the need for the surgery.  But if you can’t, you might want to try it”.  This leaves me feeling guilty in a couple ways.  1. If I get the surgery, I am somehow a weaker person because I cannot live with the pain.  And 2. If I “try” it, and it doesn’t work, it was my bad decision.       

I would not say that options are the enemy.  Some are harmless and take little energy, such as deciding to but white or yellow American cheese at the deli counter.  All these little, medium and large decisions made each and every day take a toll on the mind and body.  We wear ourselves out, not even realizing that during the course of a day, we make thousands of decisions.   

Food Preferences and Dog Meat

As I read about innate and conditioned food preferences, I was reminded of the part in Endurance when the men are on the verge of going hungry and resort to shooting and eating the last of the dogs. While this was a hard part of the book to read, since in our culture it is not widely accepted to eat dog meat, it is understandable that the men would choose this option. What I found intriguing about it was the men's reaction to eating the dog meat--they thought it was absolutely delicious. While this does not directly connect to conditioned food preferences, it does exemplify how our attitudes towards food can change depending on our situation. Many of the men would likely have been squeamish if they weren't so deprived, and perhaps they still were. But there was no denying how much better the dog meat tasted than the seal meat.
On a different note, there have been many things in my life that I thought I didn't like, but as I was forced to try them out of politeness over the years, I learned that I just hadn't been exposed to them. Runny eggs, for example. I thought they were gross until I actually tried one. It turns out I had learned this "they are gross" perspective from my mother, who had never cooked them for us and never encouraged us to try them because she herself did not care for them.

Response Deprivation & Shackleton's Men

In reviewing and further researching the slides provided in this course, I couldn’t help but think of the men we are reading about in Endurance when I learned the definition of response deprivation theory.  Contrary to Premack’s principle where a person will perform a less desirable task to obtain the desired outcome; response deprivation is where the desired outcome will reinforce the behavior IF the subject is deprived of the desired behavior.  I think of part IV of Endurance.  During this time, the men are forced into their boats due to cracking and depleting floes.  Some see it as relief from the ice, but in their hurriedness to get into their boats, the men failed to remember ice to be melted into water.  They would go days without water, which added to the misery of small food rations, treacherous weather conditions, and the fact that their course was many times rescheduled.  The men were forced to chew raw seal meat just to drink the blood. 

Elephant Island was in sight and the men had no option but to give all they could to reach land.  Despite their lack of sleep and water, they rowed.  And rowed.  Hour after hour.  Even while realizing they were caught in a current, they continued on.  The desired outcome was land, where they could gain some rest and melt some snow into water.  Would they have been so determined to continue on throughout the night if they had water onboard with them and were able to rest during the past few days?  Maybe not.  They were deprived of two imperative necessities of life; rest and water.             

Welcome Summer 16' Students!  I look forward to your posts.

GSS 2148 Pseudoscience & The Paranormal

The Demon-Haunted World
Carl Sagan


I received my book today in the mail about The Demon-Haunted World. Since this is my first blog entry I wanted to start talking about my interest in this course, and what I want to pull out of the book and pull out of the course. I always had a interest in the paranormal, ghosts, and demons. I always hear so many mixed things about if all this stuff is really, the real deal. So many shows, with ghost hunters with cameras, and heat devices say that they feel these ghosts around them. Do I believe in the after life? Of course I do, but I want to know the truth behind ghosts coming back and effect other people who are still alive today. I am hoping this course gives me the realization of this phenomena and how real it is, from the movies, to shows, to this book I am about to read. I am hoping this book explains the real truth behind pseudoscience, and what is untrue. I am excited to see what importance this brings to my life, because I want to be fulfilled with knowledge, and learn what is true and untrue within the paranormal world.