ABC's...Easy As 123 Million?

In the world of a behaviourist, the ABC's mean more than just the letters of the alphabet.  They represent the relationship as part of one's behaviour(s): the (A)ntecedent-(B)ehaviour-(C)onsequence chain that is most of the behaviours we demonstrate.  To keep things simple, antecedents are things that happen before a noted behaviour.  You can call them "triggers" or "cues" if you'd like.  For example, for many of us on the roads, the traffic light is one antecedent to our driving behaviour.  If it's green, we go.  If it's red, we stop.  Meanwhile, consequences are the events or responses that occur after a behaviour.  These are either reinforcing (therefore behaviour maintains or increases over time) or they are punishing (therefore, behaviour decreases).  In the traffic light example, attending to the red light and putting on the breaks results in us safely stopping in time; thus, preventing any harm or accident.  For the most part, going through repeated experiences of the same A-B-C chain results in us learning and maintaining our skills.

Imagine all the A-B-C chains you go through on any given day.  Now imagine your role as part of someone else's A-B-C chain (i.e. something you said or did is the antecedent or consequence of someone else's behaviour).  If you're not overwhelmed already, next imagine all the different people in your life and the lives of others fulfilling the same antecedents/consequences but under different circumstances or in different environments.  The combinations of A-B-C chains seems almost endless.  The Count can't even keep up!

With so many varied and possible A-B-C chains, it explains how we as humans are unique: each with our own set of behaviours, skills, talents, interests and yes, even challenges.  We all have our own unique learning history that sets us and our behaviour apart from others.  Human behaviour is unique.  We are not all robots, nor does behaviourist theory attempt to make a person into one.  Unfortunately, this is an ever-returning criticism of behaviourism: that it ignores individual uniqueness.  I did fairly well in my finite mathematics course in high school and so I'm certain that the rate at which someone will find their perfect behavioural match is an unthinkable number. 

Perhaps The Count will let us know when he gets to that magic number 1 in ??????

Celebrity Bad Behaviour

Recently, CBC Radio 1's Jian Ghomeshi discussed whether or not he thought he should seek an interview with Charlie Sheen for his radio show, Q.  While I'll let you listen to his podcast to know what decision he came to, it made me think about, and question our relationship with celebrity hollywood gossip.  No need to get into the media storm surrounding Sheen and his bizarre behaviours of late, but isn't it sad that the man is more popular and more sought out for an interview or talk show spot since his most recent trip down destructive lane?  What's even more sad is that this attention comes in the form of poking fun at what could be a serious mental health problem.  Meanwhile, your average Joe experiencing his first psychotic break has to jump through flaming hoops and over wait list hurdles in order to be seen, heard and taken seriously.

We laugh at celebrity bad behaviour and yet in the same breath scoff at what's being said and done.  For people whose job it is to entertain (i.e., get our attention) our initial 'laughing at' is all the attention they need to keep going despite the tone we end up taking.  Their behaviour is not ours to judge if it's our attention that maintains it.  The funny thing about attention as a reinforcer for behaviour is that most people don't differentiate between positive and negative attention; they'll take what they can get!  In Hollywood, this concept is more often coined, "any press is good press".  I think the same holds true for any of us: any attention is good attention.  Many of us don't chose to engage in destructive behaviour(s), but if it is one of only a few ways we can get people to pay attention to us, we're going to keep doing it.  That is, until the day the people in our lives decide they will no longer pay attention to a particular behaviour of ours and stick to it, together.

Guess there's little chance of getting the million plus twitter followers Sheen has recently acquired to un-follow and ignore his antics.  And we wonder why celebrity bad behaviour persists?

Side note: to check out a celebrity whose behaviours I do appreciate, consider following @jianghomeshi instead