*The science of Selfies* Why are people so addicted to Selfies? Well Applied Behavior Analysis can help us with that. While listening to a popular morning talk show, I heard them discussing how some psychologists are saying many people are addicted to selfies and possibly have a disorder based on this phenomenon (This was later proved a hoax of sorts as the APA never classified this as a mental disorder). They then went on to discuss all the possibilities of why this is occurring and mentioned explanations such as low self-esteem, self-absorbed, and recognition. As a Behavior Analyst, I cringe at hearing these explanatory fictions, because simple parsimonious explanations were immediately overlooked. Well, #NeverFearBehaviorManIsHere The first premise we must understand, is that human behavior is shaped based on contingencies of reinforcement. After a behavior occurs, it is either reinforced (the likelihood of that behavior occurring will increase) or punished (the likelihood of that behavior occurring will decrease) based on the consequences (stimulus changes that occur following the behavior). In many cases regarding selfies, we see that the behavior is being reinforced (increasing). So how is this happening? Likes. Yes. The little thumbs up at the end of a post. Somehow, in this Facebook universe, Likes have become powerful conditioned reinforces, and they (in many cases) serve as a reinforcing stimulus change to a behavior that occurs on Facebook. We can theorize why selfies began receiving more likes than other types of posts, but the idea here is that people are more likely to engage in taking selfies if they receive a high volume of likes after posting them. And the people who are addicted to taking selfies, most likely are the individuals that gain A LOT of likes. #selfies #behavioranalysis #aba #science
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 23:42:04 +0000
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