A couple of years ago I purchased a Staffy pup and my boyfriend at the time purchased her sister. Now one Staffy on its own is trouble, two are insane, they destroyed everything in sight, beds, the garden, clothes - Atari even had a brick as a toy (she chewed it down to a pebble). We couldn't control them, and then we took them to obedience school and Atari the biggest, meanest looking dog in the bunch became the star pupil. She responded to commands, and became the favourite of the trainer and we gushed with pride.
The dog trainer was using behaviour modification theory to change and reinforce Atari's behaviour, he would gently correct her bad behaviour and enthusiastically reward her good behaviour. While behaviour modification is often used with animals it is seen as perhaps a little primitive for people, but I've been using it as a theory lately when it comes to my study. I will say to myself, 'I will study for two hours and when I'm done I can watch that TV show' or I set myself the goal of studying until a friend arrives and when they do I'm allowed to take a break. By doing this I am able to set realistic and achievable goals and I then get a reward for meeting the targets - it's my equivalent of a schmacko.
Rewards and benefits are a far better motivator than punishment or deprivation because they encourage you to continue to meet goals, in order to continue receiving the rewards: the better you do the more you get. When the dogs were excited and looking for attention and I then put them outside as punishment for being rowdy, it just made them want attention more and behave even worse. But if I was patient, allowed them to calm down and then rewarded them for doing so it always ended in a far more positive result. Often, we create a self fulfilling prophecy by expecting a certain type of behaviour from people or things and then treating them in a way to ensure that's exactly what we get. It allows us to be a little self righteous and point and say, "see, I told you so!"
But watching people fail isn't fun and setting them up for it is even worse. So the next time that you think someone has failed something or they've disappointed you, think to yourself - what did I do to create that?
Maybe you're just being a jerk and a little bit of positive reinforcement could go a long way.
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