Month: February 2023

Question: How does a contingency analysis approach the topic of values?

Answer: The issue is a complicated one. I value silver over steel, but value gold over silver along a monetary continuum, but value silver over gold aesthetically, or steel over either sentimentally (a gift from a loved one). In essence, value is determined by the contingencies and potentiating variables and changes given changes in contingencies. Accordingly, any definition of value is in essence a contingency analysis. Similarly, being valued says one’s behavior is arrayed along a continuum of outcomes, and is preferred over other possibilities on the continuum. One’s work is “valued” is an example. Thus, acting in accord with one’s values and being valued are different. The former is a description of one’s own value, versus the latter, which is what others might prefer. The preferred versus valued distinction is an interesting one, and likely necessary for a concept analysis.

The delay discounting literature helps make a distinction between preferred and valued. I of course value $200 more than $20, but may prefer $20 if I have to wait a year for the $200. So any concept analysis must make the distinction between value and prefer, though that is not easy. Utility theory has the most to experimentally say about quantifying value and uses preference to do so (see optional reading for NCA course). They treat value as indicated by the activity specific consequences versus other consequences. How much would one have to be paid to switch from college professor to garbage collector as a measure of how much one values a profession. It is a measure of competing value. Here preference switching is not used to indicate a change in value, but as an indicator of value. The activity specific consequences of being a professor is valued at $500,000 in income. One still values being a professor, but not as much as earning $500,000 per year.

The difference between activity specific consequences and superimposed consequences is typically the values conflict most describe. I value kindness, but my job requires me to be a bit nasty. Translated: The effects of acts of kindness are positive reinforcers and would maintain that behavior if the consequences of on the job nastiness didn’t prevent it. Searching for one’s values is often disentangling the activity specific reinforcers from the other reinforcers/aversives imposed by organizational or social requirements.

Given a range of activities, and their activity specific consequences, the ones selected by the contingency (including the behavior that meets the contingency requirement) define value. That value will change if the contingencies and potentiating variables change. Why certain activity specific consequences are prepotent over others is the study of programing. Whether one prefers what one values, is a function of other contingencies. From this one can derive the critical and varying features, but I will leave that to you.

Question: What is the role of rule governed behavior?

Answer: Briefly, a better term is rule-established behavior. Technically it is “supplementary verbal stimulation that makes one pattern of optimizing consequences more likely than another.” The resulting behavior enters into a contingency and is maintained by it. There are a range of variables that account for whether or not one will see a change when contingencies change. Often one has to ask, what has been the history of not doing what has been instructed? In essence not complying is often punished, or has a history of punishment. That makes it appear that the pattern has no consequence. An experimenter demonstrates a pattern, the participant imitates it, and it is maintained even though another pattern would be more profitable. Any such demonstration is a mand. Most mand compliance is maintained by what happens if one does not comply. Mom ask you to pass the salt. You do not, what is likely to happen? Is it really the thank you that maintains passing the salt? 

Another factor is response effort. If the patten takes little to perform, the fact that another patten might have a better payoff may make less of a difference. Another is how much variability occurs in the pattern such that it contacts other consequences. Oftentimes recent experiments use pressing a space bar as the manipulandum. In a 1958 experiment Azrin had subjects press a button under a range of conditions on an FI reinforcement schedule. The subjects did not show the FI scallops obtained with rats. Instead of concluding that human verbal behavior interfered with the schedule, that is a self-rule, Azrin tightened the button, making it harder to depress. Sure enough, beautiful FI patterns emerged. The tightening brought the participants into contact with the schedule.

Yet another consideration, what precisely is the actual Ocn-behavior relation. Skinner used an example of an apprentice blacksmith learning to use a bellows to make sure lighted coals are hot enough to do the job. The apprentice is given a little poem, “Up fast, down slow. That’s the way to make the coals glow.” Now change the type of coals used, which requires a different pattern and we may see the apprentice persist with the old pattern. That is because the coals are not the SD, the poem is, the coals are the potentiating variable for reciting the poem. If on the other hand the apprentice had been told to carefully observe the coals and to adjust the up and down pattern of the bellows until the coals are white hot, changes in coals would lead to changes in bellows pattern. In the first case the rule makes the apprentice insensitive to the coal changes, in the second case the rule makes the apprentice more sensitive to coal changes. 

As you can see, a range of variables must be considered when talking about so called rule governed behavior. Sadly, this seldom is the case.