"We're surrounded by superstitions every day -- don't walk under a ladder, don't step on a crack, avoid black cats -- but where do these beliefs come from and why do we follow them?"
What do we know from our text about superstitions? How do supersititious behaviors start? How would you breakdown these behaviors into the ABCs of behavior? What behavioral techniques can be used to reduce these behaviors?
I learned from our readings and from the research I did about superstitious behaviors that humans believe in such things quite alot. People believe and do superstitious behaviors because it helps them to take control of the uncertainty that they have about some things and it also decreases the feeling of helplessness. Superstitious behaviors start when people people show or perform a behavior and that there was a random reinforcement or punishment that was involved with that behavior. So people then associated this reinforcement or punishment with that behavior, even though it randomly happened and may never happen again. I have to admit I'm not exactly sure how you would break down these behaviors into the ABC, I believe I know that what the behavior and the consequence would be, but not too sure about what the antecedent would be exactly in these cases. I feel that punishment procedures could be used in these behaviors. If people perform these behaviors and then the consequence is aversive these behaviors would most likely be reduced. Extinction could also most likely be used, in the sense that the reinforcement that occurred at first dosen't happen as much or doesn't occur at all.
Since I just did a write up about this behavior, I might as well write a little more about it. As humans we do many things that are superstitious. But the reason why so many people continue to do this is because they have been prevoiusly reinforced for doing the behaviors. Therefore they will continue to do as long as they get reinforced. The only problem is that no matter what something is going to happen. Say you do not keep something in the oven at all times and then your family does not have food for themselves. You are still being reinforced for the behavior that you emmited!
From the reading, we know that superstitious behavior in behavior modification is when an organism performs a behavior that they think will lead to reinforcement but really have no impact on being reinforced at all. An example of this would be pulling the lever of a slot machine over the button because you believe you will when more when pulling the lever. Superstitious behaviors ultimately start in an instance when maybe you did a certain behavior before being reinforced and you think that behavior is the reason you were reinforced. So from now on, you do that behavior before attempting to be reinforced.
You can explain superstitious behavior with the ABC's as well. Lets take a black cat walking by you, which is said to be bad luck.
A- A black cat walks in front of you.
B- You take this as a token of bad luck so you spit which is said to avert the bad luck.
C- Now every time a black cat walks by you, you spit to avoid bad luck.
superstitious behaviors are those that we perform because we received some sort of reinforcement from the behavior at one time. Ultimately, the superstitious behaviors are just correlated with the reinforcement that we receive, and rarely caused by the behavior. I'm assuming many of these started because performing these rituals worked for a few people and the reinforcement they received was somehow ended up being highly beneficial to them. The outcome, or the reinforcement was probably so beneficial that other people wanted to receive the same reinforcement so probably attempted the same behaviors many times whether or not they received this reinforcement any or at all, and passed the ideas down through generations.
I think a good way to reduce these behaviors would be to have people emit these behaviors a number of times over and over again until they realize that there really is no real reinforcement (or at least any sort of substantial reinforcement) by emitting the behavior, and eventually it will become extinct.