From: bear@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Bear Giles)
Subject: Re: Partial Legalization
Organization: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Adminstration / Boulder Labs
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 06:11:39 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.015812.2283@pony.Ingres.COM> jpk@Ingres.COM (Jon Krueger) writes:
>Bear Giles writes:
>> if you apply operant conditioning to someone with
>> negative reinforcement for 'inappropriate' behavior
>
>Then you are applying punishment, not negative reinforcement.

Checking the technical language, you are absolutely correct.

I used 'negative reinforcement' instead of 'punishment' because I
had forgotten these words have technical definitions as well.  I
wished to avoid implying physical punishment (e.g., electric shocks
or loss-of-privileges) without further knowledge of the study in
question.

In addition, my undergraduate text (_Psychology_, Bourne & Ekstrand,
3rd edition, page 123) gave the following example in the discussion of
the difference between punishment and negative reinforcement:

Negative reinforcement:
  A prisoner of war is tortured until he or she makes responses
  desired by his or her captors, such as confession; the torture
  is then terminated.  _This process strengthens the response of
  saying what the enemy wants to hear_.  (Emphasis added).

I had forgotten reading this passage, but when I was researching
the definitions of punishment and negative reinforcement I sharply
remember reading this a ..long.. time ago and being struck by it.

(At about the same time I was reading the _Illuminatus_ trilogy
and its 'snafu principal,' so there was bit of reinforcement going
on.  The snafu principal, for those who haven't read the books, is
the claim that honest communications are possible only between equals.
If there is an imbalance of power, e.g. a supervisor and his employees,
the employees will have an incentive to tell the supervisor what she
expects to hear rather than the truth).

The striking similarity of the passage above and my comment that
conditioning of pedophiles may result in them better avoiding 
detection, rather than effecting a cure, suggests there may have
been a bit of cyptoamnesia at work here.

I apologize for any confusion I may have caused by my misuse of the
technical language.


Bear Giles
bear@fsl.noaa.gov

(P.S., I am not as cynical as you might think.  I'm somewhat interested
in why people believe in pseudo-science, cults, etc., as well as issues
surrounding sexual abuse and this type of effect is quite common.

(If you research parapsychology, for instance, and report the results
in a responsible manner most people ignore you.  Once you stop that
nonsense and return to real research the scientists will stop dismissing
your work (and you'll get your grant, tenure, etc.), or once you stop
using weasel words like "preliminary results indicate" or "a modest
deviation from statistical expectations" the new-age groupies will stop
ignoring your work (and will spend lots of money buying your books,
attending your lectures, etc).  Either way there is a combination of
negative reinforcement and rewards to 1) force a person to take
sides and 2) adhere to the 'party line' once a side is chosen).
Newsgroups: sci.psychology