Behavior, Motivation and Self-Control

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Chapter 4: Behavior, Motivation and Self-Control

In chapter 2, we considered the general steps in self-help and what specifically we would like to change about ourselves. In chapter 3, we thought seriously about our values--what would add meaning to our lives. So, I will assume you now have some self-improvement goals in mind. In this chapter, let's see if we can gain more self-control, starting with behavior, i.e. what you do or how you act.

Introduction and Overview

Intro to Learning

o Classical conditioning o Operant conditioning o Recent research on conditioning o Observational learning & cognition (including self-help

efforts) o Reinforcement

Motivation

o The importance of setting goals o Achievement o Attribution theory o Motivated underachievement o Social-Cognitive theories of achievement o Becoming motivated to study o Learned industriousness o Humanistic theories: hierarchy of needs o Positive addiction o Popular motivation books; serious references

Managing difficult behavior

o Behavioral blocks and getting unstuck o Why do we lose self-control? o Preventing unwanted behavior o Relapse prevention o Controlling simple habits

Why behavior is hard to understand

o Payoffs change over time o Positive reinforcement vs. negative reinforcement

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o Intrinsic satisfaction & when rewards harm o Enjoying work and getting into the "flow" o Unconscious payoffs

Procrastination: an example of hard-to-understand behavior

o How to stop procrastinating

Planning behavioral changes

Review of methods for controlling behaviors

o Self-help methods, continued

Completing your self-help plan

References and methods for specific disorders:

o Addictions o Alcoholism o Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD or ADHD) o Compulsive spending or overspending

More specific problems:

o Eating disorders o Gambling o Internet addiction o Obsessive-Compulsive disorder

More specific problems:

o Sexual addiction o Sleep problems o Smoking o Speech problems o Unwanted thoughts & worries o Workaholism

When to seek professional help

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Introduction

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could control your behavior? You'd avoid over-eating, alcoholism, all bad habits, procrastination, being late, impulsive comments and purchases, sinful behavior, misplaced objects and papers, rushing at the last minute, etc. Instead, you'd have good health, a beautifully exercised body, excellent work habits, an organized life, success, good social graces, good mental health, healthy attitudes, and practically a guarantee of getting into heaven.

The truth is: you can't control all your behavior. We are all a little out of control. Some of us are seriously out of control. For example, some of us are ruining our lives and/or killing ourselves with food, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, careless driving and other ways. Some of us are blowing off our school work or our jobs but still believing, even though it is very unrealistic, that we will "be successful." Some of us can't get or hold a job, or hold on to love, or properly care for our children, or manage a home and pay our debts. There is an enormous difference between the people who are out of control and those in control. It is important to understand the causes of behavior and how to change it. We could all gain better control.

Keep in mind that "behavior" is just one of five parts of any human situation (see chapter 2). The fact is that behavior (actions) and the other parts--feelings, skills, thoughts, and unconscious drives--are so intermixed that it is artificially over-simplified to talk about one part in isolation. Yet, psychologists do that a lot (me too, right now). Otherwise, things get very complicated. And, indeed, perhaps clinicians do over-analyze things, always wondering what you mean when you say "Hello!" But in the 1950's and 1960's psychologists focused on behavior and learning theory, then in the middle 1970's to 1980's the focus was on cognition (thinking). Both were over simplified. Now, in the 1990's focus has turned to the interaction of emotions, values, motivation, unaware perceptions and needs with behavior and thoughts. Psychological methods, like therapy and selfhelp, change our brain. This chapter explores these many interactions. William James and Sigmund Freud would certainly be pleased with the recent return to introspection of our conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings.

It is wholesome to keep a historical perspective. We must not forget how young modern psychology is (and how ignorant we all are). Only 150 years ago, we did not use the concept of unconscious forces. Instead when people behaved in ways they didn't "intend" to behave, it was thought they were possessed by an alien force--the will of God, the work of the Devil, a guardian angel, or other spirits (Ellenberger, 1970). In 1900 the focus was on instincts, the stream of consciousness, the "will," the self, and so on. Psychology has changed, but we haven't come far. Wonder what psychology will be concerned with in 2100?

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Langer (1989) reminds us that many of our actions are "mindless," i.e. done automatically without weighing the rationality or the pros and cons for the action before responding. Rather than mindless, it may be more accurate to label a good bit of our behavior as self-deceptive or self-conning. For instance, when asked "why are you doing that?" people frequently give an explanation quickly and confidently, but it is often inaccurate (they overlook important factors or are unaware of some response they made and so on). Likewise, people have lots of silly ideas and feelings about their own behavior, such as "I can tell when someone is looking at me" or "I think I have a pretty good chance of winning the lottery." We could also cite as foolish the denial of alcoholics, smokers, over-eaters, non-studying students and others. In any case, whether we are just unthinking about what we are doing or unwittingly fooling ourselves, Langer's point is that greater awareness (mindfulness) is needed for more rational self-direction and greater self-control. Freud would say we haven't learned much yet; we still need to become aware of our conscious and unconscious cognition, including repression, rationalization, denial and other defense mechanisms.

There may be some behavioral habits that have little or no cognitive, emotional, or unconscious aspects, such as brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, walking, breathing and so on. But, as we learned in chapter 2, most behaviors are influenced by other parts of the problem, e.g. eating when anxious or bored, smoking or drinking to relax, procrastinating to avoid work, socializing when we need pleasure, avoiding hard tasks because we think we can't do it, learning new skills when we feel inadequate, setting low goals so we won't feel too disappointed if we don't do well, etc. Consequently, you can't fully understand most human behavior without considering many factors: environment, perception of the situation, consequences of our behavior, learning from previous experience, emotions, needs and level of motivation, knowledge and skills, values and life goals, plans and intentions, expectations, self-deception, unconscious processes, genetic and physiological or hormonal factors, and possibly many, many more variables. All at once!

In the 1940's and 1950's, psychologists thought they would develop one learning theory based largely on rats and pigeons which would explain all human behavior. Not likely! But learning is very important. Almost everything we do, feel, or think is learned. Learning is usually necessary for changing--changing your behavior, changing your mind, changing your awareness, etc. This 100-billion-neuronbrain of ours with 1000 growing, changing synapses on each neuron and over 50 chemical neurotransmitters interacting in each synapse enables some wonderfully complex behavior and thoughts. No computer comes close to matching the human brain. Two and a half pounds of fantastic living matter that can, hopefully, study and understand itself. What a phenomenon!

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Overview of this chapter

In this chapter we will concentrate on understanding ordinary behavior, including how new behavior is learned and how behavior is changed (this is continued in chapter 11). We will look at simple models of learning. Then we will focus on motivation, especially achievement motivation. The common problem of procrastination provides us with a more complex behavior to analyze. Stopping unwanted behaviors and preventing relapses are other important skills to acquire. The chapter concludes with several explanations of why behavior is hard to understand and with a brief description of many methods for changing behavior, using various forms of oral consumption for our examples.

Obviously, emotion expresses itself partly through behavior, but separate chapters deal with fear (ch. 5), sadness (ch. 6), anger (ch. 7) and dependency (ch. 8). Also, skills (ch. 13) influence your performance in many ways. Certainly your thoughts, including your goals and plans, self-instructions (ch. 11), values (ch. 3), expectations, self-concept, personality, self-deceptions, unawareness, and unconscious factors (chs. 9, 14 and 15) influence your behavior. You may want to go directly to those chapters, skipping behavior, if those emotions or cognitive factors seem to be more at the core of your problems.

Psychologists use the term "learning" to refer to any change in behavior that results from experience (Hergenhahn, 1982). To a degree some of our actions are surely influenced by our genes or just by "human nature," but most of our behavior, in contrast to other animals, has been learned from experience. This is true of our unwanted behavior too. So, if bad habits have been learned, they could be unlearned. Likewise, becoming a better person, more thoughtful of others or more skillful, involves new learning (new behavior, new thinking, new values, or new motivation). Thus, as we come to understand more clearly how we got to be the way we are, how we learned to be ourselves, surely we will know more about how to become what we would like to be. That's our task here.

Typical Introductory Psychology textbooks have described three common kinds of learning: operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and complex social learning. In the first kind of learning (instrumental or operant) we attempt to use our past experience to produce some result, some payoff, usually some change in the environment. Example: You act nice to get someone to like you. The second (classical) usually produces an automatic reflexive response, often an emotion, to a specific situation. Example: Cigarettes come to taste good and calm you down after you have smoked thousands in relaxed circumstances. The third kind of learning (observational or social modeling) is when we learn ways of behaving by observing someone else, such as how to approach someone in a bar or how to get our way by getting angry. In this chapter, we'll learn more about these ways of learning. We will attempt to analyze the real causes of real life

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situations. It is more complex than implied in most textbooks but you can understand it easily.

Therapists and experimental psychologists know quite a lot about changing. For instance, (1) changing your "environment," including your expectations and plans, can encourage good habits and discourage bad ones. (2) Simply observing your actions will often change them. Disrupting the old unwanted habits and substituting and practicing new desired responses will help. (3) Rewarding the desired actions, thoughts, or feelings immediately, while ignoring or punishing the unwanted behavior, are sometimes useful methods. The last part of this chapter and chapter 11 show you how to carry out these methods and many others. The primary focus in this book is on changing things.

For a clear understanding of behavior, we need to separate (a) the process of learning new behavior from (b) the condition of becoming energized or motivated to act out something you already know how to do, i.e. learning differs from performance (or motivation). Sometimes we must learn a new response in order to cope; the mousey person must learn to be assertive. But much of the time we know how to do the desired behavior, e.g. study, stop eating, attend to our spouse, clean the bathroom, control our anger, etc., but the problem is getting ourselves motivated enough to do it. The only new learning we may need in these cases is more understanding of how to increase our motivation or determination. However, in most self-help projects, you will need to learn new self- modification skills as well as acquiring some means of increasing your drive towards your goal, for instance avoiding temptations, persevering for long-range goals, resisting emotional reactions and so on. Self-help involves mastering selfmodification techniques, increasing motivation, and developing a belief in yourself as a change agent.

To understand ourselves, we must comprehend the causes of our behaviors. Wise observers have discovered many explanations for behavior which are not obvious and not common knowledge. But this uncommon knowledge needs to be made common. For instance, (1) the payoffs for a behavior may be unrealized, e.g. shyness is reinforced by avoiding social stress; payoffs may be quite delayed, e.g. a career yields rewards years later; or payoffs may be something we find hard to believe we want, e.g. to be sick or to fail. Also, the effectiveness of a specific reward depends on the context, e.g. a bribe of $10.00 is very different in a very poor family than it is in an environment offering many rewards. Certainly, the payoffs for the same behavior, say drinking, may subtly change over the years or occur only occasionally (called partial reinforcement). (2) Reliance on or over-emphasis on extrinsic rewards (instead of intrinsic enjoyment of the activity itself) may be harmful in some situations, e.g. the good student who comes to say, "I only study because I get $50 for every A" or more commonly, "I'm only studying so I can get into college." (3) Our behavior may suddenly change when we realize there is an alternative way to react or when we recognize long-range

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consequences hidden to us before. (4) Underlying emotions, which we only vaguely recognize, may be the major factors producing our behavior, such as when anxiety causes us to overeat or to be compulsive. Awareness of these kinds of facts about learning can help you gain self-control.

If you don't have the capacity to change yourself and your attitudes, then nothing around you can be changed. -The Koran

Remember, you will learn, retain, and enjoy reading this book more if you immediately apply the ideas to your own life--see if the theories explain your behavior, think about how you could use selfhelp methods to change, and imagine trying out the methods yourself or telling others how to use the methods. If you don't use--or at least think about using--a new idea within 24 or 48 hours, you are at risk of losing it forever.

Introduction to Learning

We change (learn) as the result of experience all the time. That doesn't mean that it is easy to change our behavior, however. If learning to be good were easy, we'd all be saints! Right? Let's see if we can understand why self-improvement is often difficult. Perhaps because there is another paradox, namely, psychologists and ordinary people know a lot about learning (changing) but there is a lot more we don't understand. Our ignorance and pessimism about self-control sometimes overwhelms and paralyzes us.

Consider how mysterious some behaviors are. Why are some very attractive people shy? Why do some of us eat and eat until we are fat, unhealthy, and ugly? Why do others refuse to eat because they weigh 95 pounds but think they are fat? Why do some drink until they die of liver disease? Why might a person smoke cigarettes until they get throat cancer, lose their windpipe, and even then continue to suck the smoke through an air hole in their neck? Why do we often hurt the people we love? Why do we put off studying until the last night before an important exam? Why are some of us pessimists and others optimists--some just get lemons while others make lemonade?

Everyone has a life-time of experience with learning, especially finding out how to get what we want. We seem to have inherited a

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brain that is especially adept at learning to cope, but we also learn many self-defeating behaviors. Every person has thousands, probably millions, of learned behaviors or habits. Many are very useful, like brushing our teeth, driving a car, talking, etc. Bad habits are probably learned in the same ways as good ones. Replacing bad habits with new, valued ways of behaving probably follows the same learning principles. So let's learn how to change our behavior by learning more about the process of learning. First, a case.

John, the procrastinator

Consider the case of John, a college sophomore, who is a procrastinator. John is of average intelligence and wants to be successful, a manager in a corporation. Yet, he puts off studying, especially math and science. He knows he could learn it but these subjects take time and become boring. He can't just fake his way though a physics exam. John has been and still is especially good at sports, particularly baseball and football, because he is stocky and strong. Also, John has many friends, both male and female. It is very hard for him to study when he has so many fun things to do. Lately, he has noticed resenting the teachers who pile on a lot of work. He is just barely staying off probation.

Clearly, John is in a reinforcement-rich environment; there are so many enjoyable things to do. Thus, it is hard for studying to compete with all the opportunities to socialize, party, relax, play sports, listen to music, talk, flirt, have sex, etc. How could studying math and science possibly be more enjoyable than all these fun things? This chapter focuses on this kind of dilemma.

(Follow up at age 38: John flunked out of college in his junior year, got married to a girl in his hometown, and had three children. His job is secure but uninteresting; it involves operating large earth moving equipment. He has become a loner and depressed. He and his wife drifted apart. Divorced at 37, he misses his children terribly. He still tends to procrastinate, is late for work, doesn't pay his bills on time, and makes no plans for the future. He manages to keep his job but isn't likely to be promoted. The dreams of success he had in college seem so far away and futile to him now.)

Background to theories explaining why we behave as we do

Learned people have always been interested in learning. 2400 years ago, Plato believed that we all had a soul which knew everything. He thought this knowledge was available to us through our "mind's eye" via introspection and reasoning, not observation. His student, Aristotle, disagreed; he believed we learned through observation and thinking to discover the "laws of nature." For instance, Aristotle observed and concluded that ideas were associated in certain ways; namely, ideas that are similar, opposites, frequently paired, and

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