WEIRD DICK--AN INTRODUCTORY FOOTNOTE Like all the autobiographers in this book, I’m a behaviorist (a behavioral psychologist). We behaviorists don’t believe in the psyche, the mind, mental activity, none of that stuff. All we believe in is behavior, what a person actually does. The other stuff is just conveniently invented explanatory fictions. But our goal is to understand all humanity, strictly in terms of behavior, without reference to the mind and mental activity. So you can well imagine, that this grandiose, behavioristic endeavor requires a high level of mental activity; I mean covert verbal behavior. But we’re also a special type of behaviorist; we’re behavior analysts. Mainly what we do is analyze behavior in terms of the effects of a person’s behavior on their environment and the reciprocal effects of their environment on their behavior. I behave: I tell a really cool joke. And my behavior affects the environment: You acknowledge my comedic brilliance by rolling on the floor in hysteric laughter. And the reciprocal effect is that I’m likely to tell more jokes. Your laughing approval is music to my ears, a reward. In behavior-analytic jargon, your laughter is a reinforcer for me. And so I’ll be more likely to tell more jokes, because you rewarded (reinforced) my joke telling. And we call the relation between my joking and your laughing a reinforcement contingency. But, if you’d sneered and walked out of the room when I joked, that would have been a punishment contingency. I apologize, gentle reader, for burdening you with this jargon, but we behavior analysts simply can’t function without our jargon (we even consider that a virtue!). FaceBook Friends: Appreciate any grammar checks or tech checks on this one. Thanks.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:24:39 +0000
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