"WASHINGTON -- In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan. But he was the wrong guy."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/at-cia-grave-mistakes-led_n_820627.html
How does this related to what we have been studing about reinforcement and punishment?
Can you apply the ABCs of behavior to this article?
This is a prime example of how if punishment is not carried out swiftly and consistently it will do not good in teaching anyone that a behavior is wrong/aversive. The fact that punishment was not carried out swiftly, and it sat on the back burner for many of these cases, led to punishment simple falling throught the cracks.
A: search for terrorist
B: mistreatment of hostage
C: Promotion in rank/job
Other officers are seeing that such behavior that should be punished, not being punished and also seeing these soldiers being reinforced by getting better positions. While they are not saying that they get these positions by emitting these behaviors, it is still known that many officiers that have emitted usch aversive behavior have later received a pleasurable promotion. Others may see a correlation between these and believe promotion was a reinforcement for their behavior.
It still makes me sick that people are getting away with this AND getting reinforced for it. Some of our government is clearly corrupt and they need to get their priorities straight. It shouldn't all be about violence...
There's obviously some sort of reinforcement going on, otherwise we wouldn't have such a problem with this kind of thing. The "punishment" is either too weak, not consistent enough, happens too long after the bad behaviors, or, more likely, is all of the three combined into a horrible attempt at punishment. There's also a large conflict of interests here. The CIA wants all terrorists captured, off the streets, or otherwise disposed of. It appears that part of the recklessness is due to the idea of "kill everybody and let God sort out the good from the bad". It's certainly not taken to this extreme, but look at the freedoms we give up to "protect" ourselves from terrorism. The common defensive statement is along the line of "I'll give up some comforts if it means at least the terrorists are gone". As far as the behavior of "getting the wrong guy" goes, the attitude of the general public and the CIA is the antecedent. We demand that all terrorists are removed from the Earth, so we push them to the behavior of capturing and abusing the wrong guy to avoid the possibility of not getting the right guy. Then the investigation of what went wrong comes in, which is a long, tedious process at best. Most times, the accused has to take a leave of absence while the investigation in underway. Sometimes these leaves are paid. Sometimes this means returning to the US from being stationed abroad. There are two 'C's here, I think. The other C is nothing happens. Slap on the wrist, maybe a little extra attention and recognition from superior officers. Good or bad, getting your name known by superiors makes it easier to get promoted. The newer research on what makes people do bad things has been leaning towards the "blame the establishment" thread, which is completely accurate. The "establishment" sets the occasion for the bad behaviors. However, this thread removes all responsibility from the organism emitting the behavior. The people should know better than to act rashly. They should be punished for causing harm to innocent people. However, it's be better for the establishment to change its procedures and for it to reinforce the good terrorist-catching behaviors by making it very clear exactly what behaviors were done well and should be repeated.
So:
A - the attitude towards capturing suspected terrorists, which is don't take chances, just grab the guy if you have the tiniest suspicion.
B - capturing and abusing the wrong guy
C1 - Vacation and a trip home, potentially.
C2 - Recognition from superiors and no real punishment
I like that you had two possibilities for the C outcome. This is very true. I guess in some aspects I can see why the government is being reinforced for what they are doing to these individuals, but at the same time it's also very corrupt. If this type of thing was happening vice versa and US citizens were being captured because they were believed to be "terrorists" we would have another war as we speak. We would never stand to be treated in the ways we are treating these other countries, so why is it suddenly okay for us to do this to them?
The fact that these people were not punished for what they did by capturing the wrong guy and torturing is absolutely ridiculous. The CIA is being positively reinforced by committing the actions of abusing that individual. These people will never learn that what they did was wrong because they get higher in their career field after they do something like torture someone, let alone the wrong person. The ABC's play a role:
A: the goal of capturing the terrorist
B: capturing and beating the wrong man
C: moving higher in the career field
This is shows that the behavior isn't going to be learned if you don't punish someone for what they did wrong right away to know that it is wrong. Althought I believe they should know that what they did was wrong.
A-having a goal of catching terrorist in the War on Terror
B-Capturing the wrong guy and beating him
C-Getting a promotion/getting noticed by superiors
I agree that there shoulf have been a punishment involved but do you honestly think that the CIA agents that originally committed the crime don't already know it is wrong? That is the issue here, even though the government didn't punish them, they were told to do so by the government, regardless of any ethical issues. The government does anything they want to and get away with it. Kind of like the bank lawsuit link. I know banks should be held responsible but the government will most likely win. The only thing I don't agree with is that the banks are being sued for faulty forclosures by the government who makes mistakes for nearly everything and don't have to pay for it.
This video is an example of reinforcement because the CIA is receiving a desirable consequence.
Antecedent = goal of catching terrorist
Behavior = catching the wrong guy and torturing him
consequence = promoted to higher position/recognition
I can't relate to catching terrorists, therefore i don't know how difficult it is to know who is actually a terrorist ot what made them capture the individual in the first place. I would think that the CIA would look into someones background before capturing them and ensure that it is the correct individual before interrogating. This is very unfortunate for the families of the hostages that were innocent. Especially when the person wrongly torturing is getting a positive reinforcement out of it.
A= taking hostages/terrorists
b= interrogating individuals
c= getting a promotion in the government
Those that didn't get a promotion were not punished, but simply retired and came back to work for the government as contractors. This kind of relates to continuous reinforcement. It doesn't matter if they do their job right or wrong, they are getting reinforced.
This is an embarrassment to the US. When we are wrong, we should admit we are wrong and receive the proper punishment for it. For instance, these people should have been fired- negative punishment. Instead, they were positively reinforced by getting promotions after the terrible acts committed. How can we expect these things to change if we are continually reinforcing them for these aversive behaviors?
A- taking a "terrorist" hostige
B- physically breaking the person down, even to death
C- getting promoted at work
This is absolutely corrupt.
I have to agree with you that this is somewhat an embarrassment for the U.S. I don't feel it right to give promotions to people because they did a bad or wrong thing. I agree in that this action of promoting when someone did the wrong thing is corrupt and will stay corrupt if we don't change things. I also feel that all these people should be punished for doing the wrong thing and just admit and confess to their wrong doing.
Well, that's slightly pathetic. The punishment was obviously directed towards the wrong guy, and that's just an embarrassment. I'm throughly shocked that the CIA member who caused this uproar was positively reinforced by getting a promotion when she clearly should have been negatively reinforced and lost her job overall. I understand that the CIA and other legal organizations do a lot of good, but when they do something like this it draws more attention. But, I think that the ABC's could be:
A-CIA thinking they're doing the right thing by taking in a 'terrorist'.
B-punishing the 'terrorist'-wrongfully
C-getting a job promotion?
Kidding, the real ABC's could potentially be:
A-the US having a power rush over capturing a particular 'terrorist'
B-physically abusing the terrorist
C-terrorist dies, and CIA gets a nifty little article in the huffington post
The fact that our country actually allows people to work in the CIA who can make such a mistake and then get reinforced for it makes me wonder what the heck I am doing going into the criminal justice system. I hope to shout that this kind of behavior is not reinforced where I will be working some day because it really is an embarrassment and it only loosens the reigns on the legal system.
I think that this would be an example of reinforcement. Even though they did something wrong, and they knew it, they still got promoted to a high rank official job. My honest opinion is that government people these days get away with a lot of things that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with. AND, they do not receive any sort of punishment for it. Instead they get reinforcement.