Last updated on December 12th, 2019 at 09:55 pm
**These articles have been put together by Academy Member Stephen Berkemeier.
Use THIS LINK to read his 5 articles on Behavior Change. Stephen suggests the following order: 1. Guide to Behavior Change 2. Guide to Reinforcement and punishment 3. Any of the strategy articles.
You can also reach Stephen at his LinkedIn**
Disclaimer
These strategies are not meant to be a form of treatment for any type of disorder, but are rather meant to be tools available for your consideration while on your journey to becoming superhuman! If you or a loved one suffers from physical, mental, emotional, or behavioral issues do not attempt to utilize these strategies as a remedy. Instead, reach out to a licensed professional if you wish to seek help.
Differential Reinforcement
Alright, so this one is going to rely heavily on my article on reinforcement and punishment, so go check it out if you haven’t already; I’ll wait…
Welcome back!
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get into the nitty gritty of differential reinforcement!
The Article on reinforcement and punishment was all about directly reinforcing or punishing your targeted behavior; this article takes a more roundabout, yet very effective approach. We know that deceleration behaviors are typically harder to tackle than acceleration behaviors. We’d rather avoid deceleration behaviors if we can, so this strategy takes the focus away from them and places it on acceleration behaviors.
When considering differential reinforcement, we can be split into two different categories: reinforcement of “competing behaviors” or “alternative behaviors”.
With competing behaviors, instead of trying to decelerate your target behavior, you focus on accelerating a behavior that would directly compete against your target behavior. For example, if you’re trying to spend less money on junk food, one idea would be to focus on reinforcing behaviors that center around budgeting your money. You give yourself only have two options, you can either spend your money on junk food or you can budget it away for something else. Once you have established these two options, you then start to reinforce the better of the two options (the acceleration behavior). The reason why this works so incredibly well is because your junk-food-spending behavior will be left on it’s own to fight it out, while you reinforce your budget-making behavior to make it stronger and stronger. Eventually your target behavior will just dwindle away to nothing, as your positive competing behavior becomes more dominant and wins the competition.
Alternative behavior reinforcement is very similar, but rather than pick something that is in direct competition, you pick something that is an easier alternative. Keeping with the same example, rather than spending your money on junk food, you can spend it on healthier snacks instead. You get to keep snacking, but the foods you choose are better for you. In this option, you’re not so much clashing between two competing options, but making a slight detour in the original path that your target behavior was already taking. As you continue to reinforce your healthier choices, the new behavior will become dominant and replace your original.
And that’s basically it. It’s a simple but elegant strategy that has been used by many people to change countless behaviors. If you think it would help you on your journey to becoming superhuman, feel free to give it a try!
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