Emotional Opponents

            There’s no denying that the weeks before Christmas are stressful: planning, crowds, last minute shopping…. You’d expect that this would lead to poor mental health. Actually, it is the post-holiday period that is usually busiest for clinical psychologists and therapists; cases of depression and suicide attempts increase after the holidays are over. The Solomon & Corbit’s (1974) theory of emotional habituation can help explain this.

            This theory assumes that there are opposing processes that act to maintain emotional balance. When you think about it, emotions seem to have an opposite: happy vs. sad, joy vs. anger. Solomon & Corbit propose that the initial emotion (called the “primary reaction”) produced by some stimulus will, by necessity, be an opposite emotion state that follows it (called the “after reaction”). According to Solomon & Corbit, the strength of the primary and after reactions will change with experience; the primary reaction will gradually weaken, but the after reaction will become stronger.

            By way of an example, consider a young boy, Mark, who grew up in a family that celebrates Christmas. We can easily imagine that in the weeks leading up to Christmas Mark’s excitement steadily grows, enhanced by a series of events, such as the baking of cookies, the decorating of the tree, visiting the ubiquitous “mall Santa”, until by Christmas Eve sleep is an unlikely event. Christmas morning arrives and the boy is a bubbly bundle of joy (e.g., “I’m so excited I could die!”). Mark calms a bit after a few rounds of present opening, but stays pretty happy. Sure, after all the cookies are eaten and the tree is taken down, Mark is a little sad, but this doesn’t last long and he quickly returns to normal; he even looks forward to going back to school to see friends and show off his new toys. Let’s fast forward through the years. As Christmases come and go our growing boy is less excited by the holidays, the end of the season is a little sadder, and the return to school not as easy or as anticipated. By the time Mark has grown to an adult the weeks leading up to Christmas are probably pleasant, although undoubtedly busy and active, but there is a greater feeling of regret and often a distinct loathing of the return to the regular work or university schedule. In some people this becomes true clinical depression. In this example the positive emotional state leading up to Christmas is the primary reaction and the post-Christmas negative emotions the after reaction. As we can see, the primary reaction gradually lessens and the after reaction strengthens with subsequent Christmas experiences.

            The figures below show hypothetical graphs of the emotional responses just described in the example. In the figures “1” represents the peak level of the primary reaction (e.g., the intense excitement on Christmas morning), “2” shows a slight reduction in the excitement (e.g., later on Christmas day after some presents have been opened), and “3” depicts the after reaction (e.g., sadness once Christmas is over). The yellow line at the bottom indicates the beginning and end of the stimulus that produces the primary reaction (e.g., the Christmas season). From the figures you can see how the pattern of emotional reaction changes with experience: the peak level of the primary reaction decreases and the intensity of the after reaction has increased markedly and lasts longer.

            As a description of the behaviour, this is fine. But the real question here is what produces this pattern of emotional response? Solomon & Corbit’s explanatory theory is based upon the underlying principle of homeostasis. It is generally understood that our bodies are well designed to maintain a physiological balance. For example, if you eat a bunch of salty chips you get thirsty; drinking water restores the osmotic balance, reducing the increased salt concentrations to a normal level. However, the same homeostatic balancing of bodily systems can be applied to psychological states, including emotions. From a physiological perspective, consider that being in a heightened emotional state of, for example, excitement for long periods of time is going to increase your heart rate, blood pressure, interfere with digestion, and a whole suite of other things. In the long run, this is going to put a lot of stress on your body. As such, your body needs to try and get back into emotional homeostatic balance. According to Solomon and Corbit, any emotion-eliciting stimulus pushes the emotional state out of stability. Based upon the principle of homeostasis, you will try to compensate by generating an opposing emotional state to counter the one produced by the emotion-arousing stimulus. And your body gets better at this with experience (i.e., you learn). The more times the initial emotion-arousing stimulus is experienced, the better you get at “recognizing” what’s coming, and the faster you respond by generating the opposing emotional state.

In Solomon and Corbit’s terminology, the emotion-arousing event produces the “primary process,” the quality of emotion directly produced by the stimulus itself. In contrast, the body’s response is called the “opponent process.” The opponent process is actually elicited by the primary process. The primary process will end when the emotion-arousing stimulus is over, but the opponent process won’t end until after the primary process is finished.

So how does this explain the change in emotion over time and higher incidences of depression following holidays? The idea is that the primary process never changes, but with repeated exposure to the stimulus that initiates it, the opponent process increases in strength and occurs earlier. The “net result” of the two underlying opponent processes is the actual pattern of emotion that is experienced. Because the opponent process is opposite in form to the primary process, we can treat the former as a negative number and the latter as a positive number. Adding the two processes values together gives the net emotional result. In the figure below, green lines represent the primary process, red lines the opponent process, and blue lines the net emotion (i.e., the primary and after reactions); the yellow line represents the duration of the emotion-arousing stimulus. As can be seen in the graphs, when only the primary process is present, it completely controls the emotional response. However, once the body produces the opponent process, this counters the primary process, so the actual emotional response decreases. Once the emotion-eliciting stimulus is over the primary process ends, but the opponent process doesn’t begin to decrease in strength until after the primary process is finished. Consequently, even after the primary process is gone there is still a lingering opponent process, resulting in the emotional after reaction. If you look at the graphs on the right, after many experiences with the emotion-eliciting event the primary process is unchanged, but the opponent process begins sooner and is much stronger. The result is what I’ve described in the Christmas example: a lower level of the positive emotional primary reaction, and a much larger and longer negative emotional after reaction. While the overall emotion levels produced by the emotion-arousing event have been brought down (i.e., are closer to homeostatic balance), unfortunately, for some people, once the primary process ends, the opponent process is so strong that it results in full clinical depression, thus explaining why clinicians are often seeing more patients after the holidays than before.

To avoid concluding this blog on a negative note, I would like to point out that if Solomon and Corbit’s interpretation is correct, you really haven’t lost the innocent excitement and joyful exuberance of Christmas that you had back when you were five or six years old. Yes, you really are still so excited on Christmas morning that you could just die! Your body, in a effort to maintain a nice emotional homeostatic balance, just does a better job of hiding it.

References

Solomon, R. L. & Corbit, J. D. (1974). An opponent-process theory of motivation: I. Temporal dynamics of affect. Psychological Review, 81, 119-145.

There’s a Research App for That (the App Just Doesn’t Know it Yet)

            A not uncommon difficulty faced by psychology research is generalizing results from studies using undergraduate students as participants to the broader population of people. Undergraduate students, often enrolled in an introductory psychology course, are often used because, well, they’re readily available and will often participate as part of a course component, unlike the general public, who often (but not always) expect some sort of compensation for their participation. Needless to say, most psychologists aren’t made of money, so they tend to make use of the somewhat captive pool of undergraduate students for their participants. Which, with respect to generalization, is a problem.

Before going any further, I need to explain some terms. First, the population is the overall group that you’re interested in studying. With respect to humans, this might be all the people on the planet. Or, if you’re really interested just in Albertan five year-olds, then the population is all the five-year-olds in Alberta. In an ideal world you’d run your study on every single individual in the population; obviously, unless you’re interested in a really specific population of only a few hundred people, this isn’t feasible for all kinds of reasons. Therefore, studies are carried out with smaller samples of the population. A sample is the subset of the population that is actually used in the study. Any study using a sample has to generalize (that is, “extrapolate”) its results to the larger population that the sample was taken from.

Now, as I said, psychologists often use undergraduate students as subjects. Unless the study is specifically interested in some psychological phenomena particular to undergraduate students, these students are being used as a sample for a larger population. But, how representative, by which I mean “indicative” or “typical”, of the greater population are undergraduate students? In other words, how generalizable are the study’s results going to be? Good studies generalize from the sample to the population very well. But therein lies the problem with undergraduate students as study participants. While relatively available, 18-22 year old undergraduate students may not generalize well to, for example, 40-55 year olds, or even to non-undergraduate 18-22 year olds. Given the aforementioned scarcity of funds available to most psychologists, paying for a more idealized sample of subjects for their studies is not usually an option. What is the unfortunate psychologist looking for good generalization of results to do? (I encourage you to insert a melodramatic sigh here.)

            Fortunately, recent technological developments are providing solutions. A variety of new on-line data collection tools, produced principally for graphic designers and on-line business analytics, can be utilized for at least some types of psychology research. I’m only going to discuss couple of these new tools here, but keep in mind that there are a number of others available. Part of the reason I’m focusing these particular applications is because they can be used, albeit in a restricted format, for free. This could be a real advantage for pilot studies and class projects, or even for psychologists looking to try the application out to see if it might meet their future research needs.

            Just to be clear, I am in no way associated with or being paid by the providers of the services I’m going to be discussing below. I just personally think that these are great applications with excellent potential for research applications.

            First, a snazzy duo of on-line data collection services, developed to let web and graphic designers upload sample pages and get feedback before putting the final product on-line, called the fivesecondtest (http://fivesecondtest.com/) and clicktest (http://theclicktest.com/). To use the service for free you volunteer some time and take other users’ tests; this gains you “karma points” that you can then use to have people take your tests. Alternatively, you can pay for the service and not have to take tests yourself (and gain other benefits as well). Fivesecondtest has subjects view an on-screen image for five seconds then answer one or more questions about what they remember while clicktest has subjects view an on-screen image and use the mouse to click on a feature related to a previously asked question.

            Ok, great, but who are the participants for a test? Participants come in two types. First, anyone who has come to the site and is willing to volunteer some time to take a test. Second, if you subscribe to the service (costing $20-200 per month; the higher costs give more responses per month and some other perks) participants can be limited to individuals given prior permission to take a specific test. The first option seems great: subjects could be from anywhere in the world, they could be anyone. How much more representative of the general population could you get? Well, actually, most of the people volunteering to take tests are probably building karma points to be able to use the service themselves, so they are probably web or graphic designers who are starting out in their career or are looking to get feedback on a project without spending much money. So, there’s likely a bias here, but still, it is fairly unlikely that they are first year undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course. Fortunately, the second option gives the researcher a lot more control over who is a participant. However, we’re back to the problem of getting participants in the first place. Still, given that the tests take seconds to complete and can be carried out from any internet capable computer, smart researchers, perhaps using some clever e-mail, Twitter, or Facebook promotion of their research, should be able to get at least some non-undergraduate participants; very savvy researchers should be able to get increasingly specific samples of the population for participants. (Getting into the use of new social media and word-of-mouth marketing to reach research participants is a whole different topic, best left for a future blog.) While these two tests are inexpensive it must be noted that they are fairly specific data collection tools, limited to static images and fairly simple questions. That being said, a single test takes, literally, seconds, making the cost in terms of time commitment for a participant in a research study minimal. I can see a variety of great uses for fivesecondtest and clicktest in, for example, perceptual, social, cognitive, and advertising psychology research.

            The second on-line data collection tool I’m going to talk about is SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/). Again, there are free and subscription options with this service. The free service restricts the number of questions on the survey and the number of surveys you can collect in a month, but there are still good possibilities for psychological research here, especially with respect to pilot studies or class projects. The subscription fees are relatively small. At the time of writing, the most expensive package is $25 Canadian per month, which provides up to 1000 questionnaire results per month; note that this is much less expensive than providing even a small honorarium to 1000 research participants as motivation for taking part in a study. Subscription offer the researcher many more options and controls. With a subscription one can construct longer questionnaires, use “skip logic”, and have total control over participants by limiting access to specific individuals. One of the things that I think is terrific about SurveyMonkey’s online questionnaires is the “skip logic” function, that is, the use of customized question paths. How a subject answers a particular question determines the subsequent questions that are asked, meaning that subjects don’t have to waste time on questions that aren't relevant, thereby reducing subjects’ frustration with the questionnaire process and, hopefully, leading to more accurate and representative answers.

As with fivesecondtest and clicktest, SurveyMonkey is highly accessible: it is available 24/7 from any internet capable computer, allowing subjects to participate in a questionnaire study at their convenience. From the researcher’s perspective, it can also be a time and money saver: a research assistant doesn’t need to be on hand to distribute and administer questionnaires to participants. SurveyMonkey could readily be utilized by researchers in any area of psychology that utilizes questionnaires for data collection. Sure, the same issues of recruiting subjects raised earlier are still here, but with the Internet and on-line sampling tools researchers really do have access to the world’s population (and all the subset samples thereof), providing that they are a little proactive and savvy about networking with prospective participants. For example, I’ve seen  a Twitter request by a psychology graduate student for participants to take her SurveyMonkey questionnaire; I re-tweeted the request, advertising this student’s study to an even larger collection of possible participants.

            Are these on-line testing applications the be-all and end-all solutions for the issue of getting away from the use of undergraduates as psychology research participants and increasing the generalizability of the samples to the population? Of course not. Do they have limitations? Obviously. But for what they do, these are excellent testing platforms for certain areas of psychology research. Yes, there are a variety of other issues that I haven’t gone into here that researchers utilizing them need to take into account, for example, the need to debrief participants post-test (although it is relatively easy when utilizing the subscription options on these services to have participants take a link to the test from a study-specific website that provides introductory and debriefing content for participants). Regardless, there are an increasing number of on-line utilities and tools becoming available for research. Yes, there’s an app for that, as savvy psychologists willing to step a bit outside the traditional data-collection box are discovering.

Zombies and the Selfish Gene

            With Halloween fast approaching I thought I’d do something that was seasonally appropriate for this blog: Zombies! Well, specifically zombies and selfish gene theory.

            Zombies are currently in vogue. TV shows (e.g., Walking Dead), movies (e.g., Zombieland), and video games (e.g., Left for Dead) have shown that zombies are currently experiencing a Renaissance of popularity in the science fiction (SF) genre. SF is an interesting gauge of public concerns, especially SF of a distopian nature. Whether by intention or accident, such SF resonates with the public’s current fears. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), depicting a situation where townsfolk were being systematically replaced by emotionless, conforming “pod people,” was viewed by many as representing the insidious creeping threat of communist ideals indoctrinating the average American. In the same way, zombie fiction reflects current worries. Early films, such as White Zombie (1932), or even later work like Hammer Horror Films’ The Plague of the Zombies (1966), focused on the mystical cause of zombification, typically linked to voodoo rituals or the like. However, post-millennial zombie fiction, for example, 28 Days Later (2002), The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), have shifted to a biological, generally viral, vector for zombification.

Zombie art by Paul La Rue, author of the webcomic Exiles

            Once infected through an exchange of bodily fluids the “zombie phage” takes control of the human host, hijacking the behavioural control, and forcing the new zombie to seek out additional bodies to parasitize. The possible self-destruction of the zombie in the process of infecting others is of little concern to the controlling virus: all that matters is the selfish propagating of the virus into new bodies.

            Interestingly, the fictional zombie virus controlling the behaviours of a human host bears distinct similarities to an important concept in evolutionary psychology named the Selfish Gene Theory. In 1976 Richard Dawkins proposed that many aspects of human behaviour could be better understood if one hypothesized that the gene and not the individual person is the actual “unit” that evolutionary selection acts on. The ultimate goal, according to evolutionary theory, is for organisms to pass their genes on to the next generation. Naturally, as resources are finite this leads to behavioural competition between individuals to be reproductively successful.

            Dawkins took this a step further, arguing that the competition exists at the level of the genes themselves, instead of the level of the organism. He proposed that genes are “replicators” inhabiting a host “vehicle.” Replicator genes, barring mutation, copy themselves faithfully across generations. For all intents-and-purposes they are immortal. For example, the same gene that evolved to regulate the development of the dorsal and sides of worms millions of years ago is present in modern humans, fulfilling essentially the same role during our embryonic development. The vehicles inhabited by immortal genes are, however, ephemeral. Moreover, their short-lived bodies are, according to Selfish Gene Theory, expendable. The ultimate destruction of a zombie “vehicle” by shotgun blasts in a movie is acceptable to the viral “replicator” as long as the virus is passed to a new host before the original’s loss. In Dawkin’s view the aim of genes is to selfishly pass themselves to a new generation, thereby maintaining their immortal existence. As a consequence, genes will specifically drive their vehicle to perform behaviours, sometimes highly risky or dangerous ones, provided that such behaviours increase the chance of passing copies of the genes to the next generation. If the host vehicle’s efforts to propagate the genes results in its early destruction, so be it; vehicles are expendable.

            Dawkins’ Selfish Gene interpretation actually helps explain a variety of human behaviours. While such traits as altruism can be explained through this theory, given that I’m contextualizing my discussion with zombies, I’m going to take a less noble (although equally sacrificial) example. Consider that humans (generally males) will not uncommonly engage in high-risk sports (e.g., free climbing, base jumping, street racing, etc.). Competing in such activities may serve to demonstrate their physical fitness, one trait utilized by women in selecting males for mates. The cognitive understanding of the dangers involved in these activities, which may result in short- or long-term injuries or even death, is not as much of a deterrent to the behaviour as one might suspect. If the individual is the evolutionary level of selection, behaviours that lead to the early destruction of said individual should have been evolutionarily selected against long ago. But if Selfish Gene Theory is correct and it is the replicator genes that are in control of the expendable vehicle then the maintenance of such behaviours makes more sense.

            But isn’t it a bit of a stretch to suggest that our genes may be trying to kill us in the aim of reproducing? Well, besides fictional zombies there are real-life examples of parasites hijacking the nervous systems of host organisms, forcing their hosts to suicidal actions that only benefit the propagation of the parasite’s genes. For example, grasshoppers normally avoid jumping into ponds due to the risk of being trapped by the water’s surface tension and drowning. However, grasshoppers infected by horsehair worms are compulsively attracted to water and will hurl themselves into ponds. Once in the water the horsehair worm bursts out of its insect host to find other worms in the pond to mate with, thereby continuing its life cycle. (For more examples of parasites taking control of hosts nervous systems, please see Sapolsky, 2003).

            Lest you’re now feeling totally freaked out that tiny parasitic genes are whispering self-destructive commands to you, do keep in mind that Dawkins only viewed the idea of “conscious” genes actively controlling your every behaviour as a metaphor. Genes are just molecular sequences of codons on your DNA that, ultimately, code for protein synthesis. Genes aren’t intelligent, scheming, manipulators of your actions selfishly sacrificing your ephemeral existence for their own immortality. That being said, the Selfish Gene Theory does provide psychologists with some important insights into real-world “zombie-like” self-destructive behaviour often seen in people.

            Happy Halloween!

References

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Sapolsky, R. (2003). Bugs in the brain. Scientific American, 288(3), 94-97.

Token Economies

            Given the amount of reading and writing that I do today, it may come as something of a surprise to know that I couldn’t read until I was in grade 3. My parents read brilliantly exciting and interesting books to me that made “See Dick run, run Dick, run,” pale by comparison. I simply memorized whatever the teacher read out loud and parroted it back; it wasn’t until part way through grade 2 that anyone noticed that I wasn’t actually reading. Frankly, I was uninterested and couldn’t be bothered. This all changed for me in grade 3 when my teacher put a world map (with each ocean and sea clearly marked) on the wall and said we were starting a new reading game. Each student in the class got to cut out and colour a medieval-style sailing ship. For every book I read and wrote a one-page book report on, my ship would move one ocean “space” around the world. When my ship circumnavigated the world, I would be rewarded with the materials to make a felt mouse bookmark with googly eyes. This was a revelation for me. I get to read what I want? And a prize for doing it? Sweet! I think my ship circumnavigated the world two-and-a-half times that year; I haven’t stopped reading since. Although I didn’t know it at the time, my reading behaviour had been successfully modified by what behavioural psychologists call a token economy.

            Token economies were popularized in the mid twentieth century in clinical and therapeutic settings, but they were actually used in educational settings at least as early as 1859 (Rodriguez, Montesinos, & Preciado, 2005), and are still used for this purpose today. For example, Breyer & Allen (1975) used one to improve the behaviour of 15 first graders with academic and social behaviour problems that were preventing their progress to grade two; more recently, Boniecki & Moore (2003) successfully applied a token economy to an introductory psychology course to increase student class participation. Besides education and therapy, token economies have also been successfully applied in business and industrial settings.

In their most standard form, token economies provide participants with tokens for appropriate behaviours. These tokens (called “conditioned reinforcers”) can then be traded in for desired back-up reinforcers (a reinforcer is anything that produces a future increase in the behaviour that led to it). In and of themselves, tokens have no actual value. Commonly used tokens are poker chips, points, checkmarks in a record book, and the like. In the case of my grade 3 reading game each new ocean space my ship moved to was a token. Remember, tokens are simply markers indicating that a desired behaviour has been performed. In a clinical application Paul & Lentz (1977), for example, gave tokens to patients in return for maintaining their personal hygiene, attending therapy sessions, keeping their living space clean, and engaging in social interaction. Back-up reinforcers can be anything at all that serves to motivate participants to gain tokens. In my round-the-world reading voyage, the back-up reinforcer was the mouse bookmark. Paul & Lentz offered a more diverse range of back-up reinforcers to their patients, including candy, clothing, cigarettes, additional furniture for patients’ rooms, radio and TV use, and sleeping late; all served to maintain the desired behaviours.

            Token economies are advantageous and effective behaviour modification techniques for a number of reasons. Winkler (1971) showed tokens to be more resistant to satiation than most primary reinforcers (e.g., food or water); a participant might fill up on snacks, and lose motivation, but can’t fill up on tokens. In addition, different people are motivated by different rewards. When working with groups of people it can be difficult for a psychologist to find a single effective reinforcer that is easily deliverable and preferred by all. But because tokens are cashed in for back-up reinforcers, by making a range of back-up reinforcers available each individuals can find something that is personally motivating to work for. Similarly, an individual’s preference for an item may shift over time. Again, by having a range of back-up reinforcers available, if a participant gets tired of receiving one type of reinforcer they can select another to trade their tokens in for. Consequently, token systems often develop behaviours at a higher level than other conditioned reinforcers, such as praise, approval, or feedback (Kazdin 1989). Unlike some reinforcers that must be delivered in an all-or-none manner (for example, consider rewarding a child for cleaning her room by taking her to a movie), tokens can be delivered in a gradual, incremental manner. Instead of one  behaviour for one big reward, multiple behaviours, each receiving a reinforcing token, can be required until eventually enough tokens are gained to get the big reward. For example, a child may receive one token for each instance of cleaning her room, brushing her teeth, putting her clothes away, etc. and ten tokens are needed to be taken to a movie. Generally speaking, the more individual behaviours that are reinforced, the stronger the learning. Finally, the task requirements to receive tokens can be gradually increased and new back-up reinforcers of greater value can be introduced as the program progresses. By starting requirements for token delivery at low levels participants rapidly receive reinforcement and are engaged by the program. However, once established, the costs can be increased until the ultimately desired levels of behavioural performance are reached; the introduction of novel and higher-value back-up reinforcers can help ameliorate negative consequences of increased behavioural cost for token delivery.

            There are, however, some potential issues in applying token economies. Except for things like money or grades, tokens aren’t generally available in real-world settings, so the token-modified behaviour may not persist after the token economy is ended. In business or industrial contexts, this isn’t really an issue as the token economy is pretty specific to the work-place setting, but it may be a consideration in clinical or educational settings if one is trying to modify behaviours that will persist in the outside environment. In addition, it may be possible for individuals to gain tokens in unauthorized ways, perhaps by stealing them or trading them with others in the program, however, this is easily solved by making tokens unique to each individual. Finally, as Kazdin (1989) points out, back-up reinforcers that are extraneous to the setting may be difficult to remove after the token economy has been completed (e.g. using tokens to purchase food reinforcers in a classroom may be problematic as food is usually not allowed in classroom settings). Of course, by initially selecting setting-appropriate back-up reinforcers this problem can be avoided.

            Finally, let’s examine a classic example of a token economy that ran for over a decade in the industrial setting of two uranium mines (Fox, Hopkins, & Anger, 1987). Tokens were given to miners for three things. First, not having accidents or injuries for specific periods of time; this provided impetus for individual miners to be more careful. Second, no miners in an entire work group being injured for a period of one month; this motivated miners to look not only to their own safety, but also that of their co-workers. Third, suggesting safety improvements that were implemented at the mines. Tokens could be exchanged by miners and their families at local redemption stores supplied with hundreds of items of merchandise; additional items were available via mail-order.

            So, did it work? The graphs below show the number of days lost due to accident and injury. Compare the data from the baseline periods, before the token economy was adopted to the data after implementation. Both mines show a clear benefit.

Similarly, the token economy resulted in a substantial reduction in time lost to injuries after the token economy was put in place, as shown in the next set of graphs.

Of course, from a business perspective, ultimately one has to ask whether or not the token economy actually led to a financial benefit. A quick look at the graphs below demonstrates the dramatic reduction in costs to the mining company due to accidents and injuries. Reduced costs equals higher profits.

            The applications of token economies are practically endless: personal fitness programs, retail sales, return of library materials, and dieting can all make use of token economies to motivate behavioural change.

Have you either implemented or taken part in a token economy, or know of someone who has? Feel free to add a comment to tell me about it.

References

Boniecki, K. A. & Moore, S. (2003). Breaking the silence: Using a token economy to reinforce classroom participation. Teaching and Psychology, 30(3), 224-227.

Fox, D.K, Hopkins, B. L., & Anger, W. K. (1987). The long-term effects of a token economy on safety performance in open-pit mining. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20(3), 215-224.

Kazdin, A. E. (1989). Behavior modification in applied settings (4^th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Paul, G. L., & Lentz, R. J. (1977). Psychosocial treatment of chronic mental patients: Milieu versus social learning program. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rodriguez, J. O., Montesinos, L., & Preciado, J. (2005). A 19th century predecessor of the token economy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38, 427.

Winkler, R. C. (1971). The relevance of economic theory and technology of token-reinforcement systems. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 9, 81-88.

Measures of Managerial Success and Evolutionary Psychology

A research study by Jane Sturges (1999) found that male and female business managers measure success by very different metrics. Sturges interviewed 18 female and 16 male managers in a leading UK telecommunications company with the aim of answering two questions:

            1. What do managers conceive career success to be for themselves? and

2. Do female managers have different ideas about what career success is for them than male managers do?

Based on the interviews, managers were categorized as belonging to one of four types of business-orientation categories.

1. Climbers, who defined career success largely in terms of their position in the business hierarchy and their progression through promotions and increases in pay grade.

2. Experts, who measured career success as achieving a high degree of competency at their job and being recognized personally as good at what they did. For Experts, the content of their job was more important than their hierarchical position in the organization.

3. Self-Realizers, who determine success by the idea of achievement at a highly personal level; personal enjoyment in the job and maintaining a balance between their home and work life was a common measure of success for this group.

4. Influencers, who defined success as being able to do things at work that had tangible and positive outcomes for the organization they worked for, regardless of their position in the organization’s hierarchy.

Here’s the breakdown of where the male and female managers fell on the business-orientation categories:

What’s so interesting about this is that three of the four business-orientation categories are dominated by one sex. Additionally, while most of the men, regardless of categorization, defined success by the position they attained in the organization’s hierarchy. None of the women defined success strictly by hierarchical advancement, and those that did indicate it was a component of success saw hierarchical achievement as a means to some other end. Clearly, there’s a big difference in how male and female managers define personal success.

            Sturges adopted a fairly traditional socio-cultural driven interpretation for her findings, suggesting that, “…managers’ ideas about career success reflect the social context in which they develop as adults” (p. 250). That is, specific societal-driven learning shapes managers’ idealizations of business success. Sturges added that the “…effects of socialization on women managers’ conceptions of career success are likely to be reinforced by their experiences as women in what is still a male-dominated profession” (p. 250). Given this, she hypothesized that if women have learned that the gender imbalance in business means that advancement to the highest managerial levels “…is not readily available to them, then they might choose to refocus their ideas of what success is on other less tangible and more internal criteria, which they believe to be more easily attainable” (p. 250).

            While learning via socialization is certainly a possible interpretation of the results, the field of Evolutionary Psychology offers an alternative perspective. Evolutionary psychologists utilize Darwinian evolutionary theory to predict and explain human behaviour patterns. In brief, Evolutionary Psychology assumes that natural and sexual selection pressures in the past produced behaviours that conferred advantages on our ancestors, and that these genetically influenced behaviours are still with us in our modern environment.

            So, what sorts of behaviours were selected for in ancestral males and females? According to Evolutionary Psychology, there were some profound differences between the sexes. Because reproductive costs are high for females (gestation, nursing, and childrearing are very energetically expensive), ancestral females looked for male mates who could provide resources to sustain themselves and their offspring. In addition, they became very good at social interaction. Women able to form strong social alliances gained advantages with respect to shared childrearing, reciprocal food and information exchange, and emotional support; empathy was a strongly selected trait in women. In contrast, competition for social status, territory, and resources was selected in males. Males did form social alliances, but these were generally narrowly focused on the tasks of hunting, warfare, or intra-group politics. In the end, those males lacking in resources were less likely to attract mates, making them evolutionary dead ends.

            Fast forward to the modern corporate environment. Sturges’ findings fit well with Evolutionary Psychology theory. Males, evolved to compete for prestige, social status, and resources comprise all of the Climbers. Evolutionarily successful women were those who could simultaneously manage childrearing and survival tasks; this fits well with Self-Realizers’ needs to balance home and work life. Six of the seven Self-Realizers were women. Because women were not spending their time competing for tribal dominance and leadership, and because of their social support networks, individual women were able to become “specialists” in various “industrial” and social roles (e.g., midwifery, clothing manufacturing, herbalism, shelter maintenance, matchmaking, etc.). Seven of the nine Experts were women. What about the fairly even split between the sexes in the Influencers category? We humans are a highly social species that naturally organize into groups. If individuals contribute to the collective good of the group, such that the entire group is stronger, this has a direct personal benefit for the individuals whose influence brought about this positive outcome. In the past, both sexes experienced evolutionary pressures to influence tribal systems; the same predispositions are still seen in the modern organizations.

            It is important to note that Evolutionary Psychology does not discount socialization. Classic studies by Albert Bandura (1977), for example, on observational learning demonstrate the significance of social reinforcement on human behaviour. That said, as further research highlights the differences between men and women in the business sector (e.g., see Ruderman & Ohlott, 2005 for sex differences in information processing, stress responses, and motivation), a greater appreciation and understanding that these distinctions may be due to evolutionarily selected genetic predispositions is warranted. While genetic predispositions can be altered via learning, unique techniques need to be developed to take into account the evolved underlying differences in female and male psychology to make programs in executive coaching, leadership development, and human resources more successful and productive (e.g., see Hopkins, O’Neil, Passarelli, & Bilimoria, 2008). Further, by accepting evolved differences in male and female managers, organizations could benefit by recognizing and utilizing each sex’s adaptations to their advantage. Don’t fight evolutionary predispositions, but work with them for greater business success.

            My next blog will move back to a more traditional behavioural modification topic, token economies, and their application to business and education. See you in a week!

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hopkins, M.M., O’Neil, D. A., Passarelli, A., & Bilimoria, D. (2008). Women’s leadership development strategic practices for women and organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(4), 348-365.

Ruderman, M. N., & Ohlott, P. J. (2005). Leading roles: What coaches of women need to know. Leadership in Action, 25, 3-9.

Sturges, J. (1999). What it means to succeed: Personal conceptions of career success held by male and female managers at different ages. British Journal of Management, 10, 239-252.

Selling your Sizzle: How Behavioural Psychology can get you a Job

            Since 2000 I’ve taught behavioural psychology to over 7000 students in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta. A not infrequent question that I hear from students is, “So, can I actually get a job learning this stuff?” That’s actually a really good question. The short answer is, “Yes.” Not satisfied with that? Ok, read on for the longer answer.

            A focus in behavioural psychology does provide you with employable skills. Bear in mind that if you’ve got your heart set on working as a clinical behaviour analyst, for example, you’re going to require additional graduate work in a clinical program. Likewise, you’re not going to be able to step into a top-level position in any field, be it education, business, therapeutic, or governmental with only an undergraduate degree. Some positions will simply require graduate work or further specialized training. Of course, even during an undergraduate degree you can enhance your marketability by taking opportunities to get “real-world” experience either through volunteering, securing summer jobs, and/or enrolling in an industrial internship program (http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/undergraduate/ipp/index.php). That being said, the knowledge and skills gained from behavioural psychology coursework itself is directly applicable to a wide range of jobs.

            Keep in mind that very few job postings will specifically advertise themselves as requiring behavioural psychology. That doesn’t mean that your behavioural psychology knowledge doesn’t have something to offer the job. Quite the contrary. What you have to do is promote your abilities to the prospective employer; you can, and should, highlight the skill set you have acquired through behavioural psychology and be prepared to offer examples of what you can bring to the position. In short, “sell your sizzle.”

            First off, behavioural psychology is the scientific study of behaviour. Many people overlook the advantages that having a foundational understanding of scientific methodology can bring to a job. Training in the sciences teaches you how to systematically pose and test problems, and critically evaluate results. Whether the job is in education or web-based marketing, knowing how to formulate a hypothesis and critically test it is beneficial.

            Additionally, you will (or should!) have had the opportunity to gain valuable skills in communicating and expressing ideas in both written and spoken format during your undergraduate degree. A 2005 study in the Journal of Employment Counseling (http://www.allbusiness.com/sector-56-administrative-support/administrative/1189004-1.html) found that university graduates were generally lacking in oral and written communication skills, requiring improvement in areas such as vocabulary use and self-expression. More recently, the Job Outlook 2010 survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (http://www.usaeducationguides.com/news/article/survey-shows-u-s-employers-value-good-communication-622) determined that United States employers “…put communication skills at the very top of their list…” when hiring. If you’ve been avoiding classes that require research papers and/or oral presentations, you’re only hurting your future employment chances. Actively seek out courses that have communication components in the curriculum and utilize them to hone your skills. Practically no “real-world” jobs hire or promote workers based on their ability to successfully take multiple-choice exams.

            Let’s look more specifically at what behavioural psychology itself has to offer. The field of behavioural psychology is foundational to many of the other fields of psychology, be it developmental, social, abnormal, industria, or cultural psychology. Pretty much everything that people do, either as individuals or in groups, from birth to death, in private or public, are behaviours. Anything that a person does that can be directly measured is a behaviour. Behaviours are facts. Facts are solid, measurable, quantifiable entities. Whether it is a baby speaking her first word, a student receiving 87% on an exam, your mom quitting smoking, or a company opening a new store in your neighbourhood, these are all behavioural facts. Leaving aside quibbles about the initial definition of a specific behaviour (for example, is 50% or 65% considered a “pass” on an exam?), once a definition is set and the behaviour observed no one can rationally argue about the occurrence or non-occurrence of the facts. Behaviours are what is done. Training in behavioural psychology prepares you to identify behaviours of interest in your area of employment, produce precise behavioural definitions (necessary for precision in subsequent data collection), devise methodologies to gather behavioural data, and then analyze and report on the behavioural activity.

“Ok,” you say, “so I’ve collected and reported that I have a bunch of behavioural facts? So what?” Well, behavioural data is absolutely necessary for anyone interested in analyzing any form of human activity, whether in the field of education, business, or government. Without specific behavioural measures, an analyst has nothing to work with. And without being able to analyze for results, trends, effects, and the like, it’s hard to make predictions about future courses of action, regardless of what sort of organization we’re dealing with.

            Look at it this way: Much of what any organization wants to know about human behaviour isn’t so much what people did (although that is important), but why they did it. Using behaviours (i.e., facts), your training in behavioural psychology will let you make inferences about people’s internal conditions, including emotional states, decision processes, drives, desires, and motivations for making choices. For a behavioural psychologist, the actual data collection is only the means to the ends of understanding the underlying, and by necessity inferential, systems that influence people’s behaviour. Companies, political parties, and charity organizations, for example, are all very interested in having someone on staff who can help them get a better handle on how to achieve their ultimate objectives.

            It is important to remember that behavioural psychology works under the assumption that all behaviour is caused by specific events, and that causes always precede their effects. As such, once a cause-effect relationship is identified, studied, and interpreted it can be used to predict people’s future behaviour. Even more valuable, once the cause-effect relationships of behaviour are understood, behavioural psychologists can use them to attempt to influence, adjust, and modify behaviour via learning.

            Learning is a change in behaviour due to experience. While there are a number of innate behavioural predispositions in humans, such as reflexive responses to specific stimuli, most of what you’ve probably been exposed to in the field of behavioural psychology has been devoted to gaining an understanding of the different types of learning seen in people. This is actually good in terms of employability because it is through the mechanisms of learning that behaviours can be altered. Depending on the career you end up in, this may mean shifting the behaviour of consumers, for example, or even changing the behaviour of the organization you’re working for itself, perhaps to increase workplace efficiency.

            A sub-discipline of clinical psychology, called behaviour modification therapy (BMT), utilizes an understanding of learning systems to assist people with psychological behavioural difficulties. One of the interesting aspects of BMT is that, unlike many other areas of therapy, it does not generally necessitate gaining a deep understanding of a patient’s life history, family relationships, underlying cognitive state, or the like. Rather, the focus is on eliminating (or at least reducing or changing) the detrimental behaviour itself. As such, the focus of the therapy is actually at the behavioural level itself, and success or failure is directly measured by the (factual) measurement of behavioural change not the inferred modification of internal (therefore non-observable) mental states.

            I know, you’re probably thinking at this point, “But wait, didn’t you say that I’d need to go to graduate school to work as a therapist?” Right. I did say that, and you would. However, that’s not my point here. These same principles of behaviour modification used in therapy (e.g., focus on changing the behaviour itself, using measurable behaviours as opposed to inferred internal constructs, etc.) are directly applicable in many non-therapeutic jobs. For example, advertisements often make use of classical (or “Pavlovian”) conditioning, generally to associate a brand with visual and/or auditory stimuli that produce positive emotional responses. If executed properly, subsequent exposure to the brand will produce a conditional (i.e., learned) response of the positive emotional state, increasing the probability of a consumer purchasing the product. These same techniques are also used successfully in the promotion of, for example, political candidates (e.g., making candidate Smith seem feel trustworthy than candidate Jones), or public service announcements (e.g., reducing greenhouse emissions by portraying car pooling in a positive light). Similarly, operant conditioning techniques are commonly applied in education, business, and government; through the use of reinforcers and punishers, behaviours can be modified. While employers may not be fully aware of the advantages someone with a background in behavioural psychology can bring to behaviour adjustment, you are… and you should make sure your potential employer learns this too.

            A variety of websites will offer advice about career options for people with a psychology degree (e.g., http://psychology.about.com/od/careersinpsychology/a/careersbach.htm). Although I’ve mentioned some broad employment “catch-basins” (e.g., education, business, government) I’ve intentionally avoided giving specific occupational titles (e.g., career counselor, sales representative). Psychology is (depending who you talk to) the study of human behaviour, brain, and/or mind. Behavioural psychology focuses right in on the behaviour aspect. Any job you ever apply for is going to involve humans to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore, while some jobs will undoubtedly fit better with your skills, knowledge, and inclinations than others, knowledge of behavioural psychology can be applied to some extent to practically any employment position.

            To recap, after completing an undergraduate degree with a focus in behavioural psychology you should have:

            1. The ability to communicate verbally and in writing.

            2. A solid grasp of the scientific method, including hypothesis formation, data collection methodologies, and critical analytic skills.

            3. The capability to identify employment-relevant behaviours and make inferential interpretations about underlying psychological principles based upon them.

            4. A good understanding of the different types of learning systems seen in humans and be able to apply learning theory to behaviour modification (at least in principle).

            These are all valuable and marketable skills that have application to a wide range of career opportunities. It is a competitive job market out there. When seeking employment actively promote your skills and knowledge to a prospective employer; make sure that he or she is aware of what you can bring to the organization. Sell your sizzle!

            Having read through all this, what do you think? Perhaps you’ve some suggestions on particular career opportunities that are especially well suited to a background in behavioural psychology. If so, please share your ideas by posting a comment.