Game theory, parenting and why Hobbes was (partially) in error
Offline (As inspired by a discussion I had tonight with Renee and Sabbysu on Skype, as well as observations made working in a grocery store for the first time)
Imagine, for a moment, the total replacement of modern Western labor status quo and law. Instead of working for money or improving one's work for pay raise, citizens work because otherwise they are beaten. If you do not show-up on time for your job and do your job well, you are whipped or struck and ridiculed. Aside from the obvious ethical concerns posed by such a system, is it that much different from our present system - and if so, how? Shouldn't such a system, if nothing else, operate at least as efficiently and steadily as our modern system?
Here we have the benefit of hindsight - and history's answer is a loud, echoing 'NO'.
In Game Theory (...and also in psychology, unless I'm mistaken?), the act of punishing a 'player' (a participant within any system) for undesired behavior is called 'Negative Reinforcement', while the act of rewarding him or her for desirable behavior is called 'Positive Reinforcement'. All players look for a 'Non Zero Sum' outcome for themselves; that is, they strive to attain more positive outcomes in their lives than negative outcomes (this is a result of our evolutionary psychology, which I don't know enough about to speak with any authority on), so their behavior within any game will be shaped by what reinforcement they recieve (with some anomolous exceptions; sociopaths are an example of such).
Despite it's importance in this arena, however, positive reinforcement is actually a rather recent point of exploration for us. The traditional line of thought for us has been what Thomas Hobbes put down in Leviathan: that only by establishing authority, and demonstrating the punitive power of such authority (the 'Leviathan') can altruism and decency arise.
In parenting terms, the only way to correct the behavior of your children is through punishing (usually physically) bad behavior.
Understanding the error in this thinking is simple enough to understand. For starters, no system with only negative outcomes will have willing participants. Players will only be those forced begrudgingly into such a game, and while they will likely obey the rules to avoid punishment, the only logical goal for such a player is rebellion; ambition to see the game ended, or at the very least, escaped from. The emergent emotional reactions to such environments have been shown time and time again to simply be discouragement, disinterest and malevolence, as players are taught that the way to behave to attain the most powerful status in the game is to punish other players.
I see this everywhere with parents, and still people will disagree with any notion that negative reinforcement is a poor method of teaching. It's sad that we would choose to once again be so blind to history; the failure of police states and slavery are stirring examples of why Hobbes was, in this particular instance, mistaken.
The benefits of positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement are so obvious, intuitive and instinctual that it simply throws me for a loop that we didn't 'get it' sooner. It's the basis of our evolution and natural selection! Every day, I watch people emotionally lash-out at their children who they've taken grocery shopping when they begin to cry or scream, often because the parent has refused to purchase something for them, who would then defend their actions as being 'disciplinary'. At best, this demonstrates a failure of understanding on the part of the parents on a number of levels:
First, and simply enough, is the fact that a young child is still in an early stage of development. It hasn't got a firm grasp on even basic natural concepts yet, much less grander human abstractions of status quo and industrialized social norms. Imagine being invited to play a game that severely punished any mistake made by a player, thus ensuring that any new players to said game would experience nothing but frustration. How would you ever learn to play the game better without being discouraged?
Second, and less intuitively, is the fact that 'discipline' is an emergent process. It's not something that can be imposed or taught; it's the end result of particular behavior modification.
Lastly, beyond what is typically a miserably failed short-term goal of stopping the child from making noise, the act is without any objective or perspective. A child's brain is great distance away from an adults in terms of it's development, but a child's emotional chemistry is - by and large - already in place. This, of course, means that children are going to naturally be more emotionally charged and less rational than adults and so circumstances that stir emotions are going to effect a child in a proportionally greater way than they would effect an adult; childhood fears that we (usually) outgrow are an excellent example of this, and outbursts over candy that isn't purchased or toys that go missing or get broken are equally valid examples (consider: to put this in perspective, how do you feel when you get rejected in any circumstance? How do you feel when your own expensive assets are damaged or stolen?)
Children are going to scream and cry. These are human emotional tendencies, and kids are more emotional than adults. It should be met with no more hostility than what you would treat a friend or acquaintance with with they have a break-down; compassion, laborious a thing as it is, is what is required of you as a parent. This does not mean caving-in to demands - it means using comfort to dissuade tears and shrieks, rather than uttering threats a child is not likely to comprehend the greater intent of or striking-out instinctively with a fit of your own (which is doomed to produce only further drama). It means building bonds and establishing social contracts with your children (something that Hobbes was absolutely correct about), and teaching and building-up their reasoning skills. It means spending that most precious of commodities - time - on them to understnad their perspective, rather than strapping them into the riding saddle of a shopping cart whenever you go shopping and presuming in a most Freudian manner that this is the equivalent of socializing with your kids.
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Sounds like slavery. You have a point, who would want to work somewhere they are whipped, struck or ridiculed? OH WAIT, I know: to make money and to get a pay raise to survive.
The survival instinct will make people endure all sorts of things. Nowadays workers may have to endure a harsh boss, a bullying coworker or a corporation that doesn't provide adequate health care. Ask yourself why people continue to work at those places... mortgage, food, kids...
I am confused by this statement (help me comprehend)
Rats in a maze? Finish the puzzle to get the cheese. I agree that positive reinforcement is the way to go...with MOST people. I have had the honor of leading and developing groups of people in a work environment for close to 15 years. In those years I can say by experience that positive reinforcement works effectively in most cases. The few that don't respond to that type of encouragement are those that don't want a pat on the back for DOING THEIR JOB. All they wanted out of it is their paycheck and the annual raise.
With that being said there are some interesting changes happening in the workplace today regarding Millennials entering the work force. They are changing the way employers are dealing with developing, motivating and leading this unique generation. Please read this article for some insight. (you will find several online) I believe this next generation is requiring a change in leadership due to the parenting they received as well as societal influences.
**Kev, I will come back to the 2nd half of your post later**
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Slavery failed as a system.
Slaves had no interest in playing the game, so they sought to get out of it. And they did - in times of antiquity, destroying their civilizations in the process.
This is the 'catch'. Again, with the exception of rare anomolies, positive reinforcement works with anyone - but the trick is that everyone has a slightly different personality, and as a result, what counts as positive reinforcement is different for everyone. Not all people (and I myself fit into this category) are reinforced by pay-raises, and as you rightly point-out, not all people are reinforced by pats on the back or congratulations. The key is finding-out what does count as reward for a given person (See: doing work) and then acting with this information.
9 times out of 10, this will allow you to encourage constructive behavior.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
slavery failed as a system for the same reason any other system fails: its time ran out. let's take ancient europe for example. the roman empire ran on a slave system. how many successful slave revolts do you know of in the roman empire? if you can name one, it'd be news to me and i was a classical studies major. due to the gradual encroachment of the barbarians, the old roman nobility lost the means of production. their land, which was once sprawling vineyards, went over to subsistance agricultural, usually in the strip system. a great deal of the new italian peasantry was made up of the sons and daughters of slaves. this was not due to the slaves throwing off their shackles because of something as subjective as "negative reinforcement." with the advance of the barbarians came the advance of the barbarian mode of production, i.e., feudalism (the nordic, germanic, gallic, etc., tribes had never really known a slave system in the roman sense, i.e., the body of a human being as a commodity). feudalism had no fewer techniques of negative reinforcement than roman slavery; perhaps more. yet feudalism lasted until the means of production passed into other hands, i.e., the guilds and later the merchants and early capitalists. there were no more successful serf revolts than there were slave revolts.
i'm not necessarily trying to debunk the game theory, i'm just saying, you can't really chalk the end of slavery up to the initiative of the slaves, who no longer "wanted to play the game."
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Punishments are different than negative reinforcements. Negative reinforcement is used to encourage some behavior. Punishment is used to discourage some behavior. With negative reinforcement you have some continuous bad condition that will only be taken away when the behavior improves.
Examples:
Punishment: your kid stays out past curfew, you ground him.
Negative reinforcement: you want your kid to do better in school, so you tell him he is permanently grounded until he gets strait A's.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
No.
Non-zero sum systems are those in which the parts working together produce more than the parts working independently could. This can benefit individuals, but there is no guarantee. A second aspect of non-zero sum systems is the nature of language. Because it costs nothing (or so close to nothing that it's practically the same) to communicate a concept to another person, we can "give" something without losing anything. If I know where a mountain stream is, and I tell someone else, then the community has benefited, and now two people will not die of thirst instead of just one, even though nobody actually "lost" any resources. That is non-zero sum economics at work.
The statement that people try to have more positive outcomes than negative is not derived from game theory. It's almost a tautology. People, being the product of evolution, are gene "survival machines." The genes that survive best are those that induce their survival machines to strive for things that are good for them. So, to say that something is a living being is really equivalent to saying that it wants more good than bad. Remember, the first replicators did not aggregate. It was well after evolution was set into motion that reciprocal altruism was invented.
Hobbes was right, and he was wrong. The nature of any society is such that unless people repay ill for ill, cheaters will prosper at the expense of fair players. So yes, it is necessary to have laws and social contracts. However, Hobbes had it backwards. Reciprocal altruism came first, and the punitive power of authority came afterwards. If you think about it, it could have been no other way. From whence would come authority and the power to punish if society did not exist? How could society exist if reciprocal altruism had not been implemented?
Again, demonstrably wrong. All organisms are very good at doing what is best for themselves. If a particular behavior consistently earns rewards, it is consistently repeated. Think of training a dog. Any dog can be trained to "come" without ever punishing it. Simply reward the dog with a treat every time it comes when you call, and treat it normally when it doesn't. Pretty soon, you'll have a dog that can't wait to hear you say, "Come here, boy!"
Yes. This is very true. Another very important thing to consider: Hopelessness leads to depression. People in situations where they can only avoid punishment and have no hope of reward become depressed, which leads to withdrawal and decidedly unsocial behavior.
Do you mean that you disagree with any notion that negative reinforcement is a good method of teaching? The way this is stated, it seems to disagree with your premise.
In any case, the best data I'm aware of indicates that teaching with both positive and negative reinforcement is by far the best way. As an example, a child must be punished for playing in the street because it is very unlikely that it will live long enough to learn that it receives no positive reinforcement when it plays in the street. Apathy, in that case, would be equivalent to permission.
Much less intuitive. What are you talking about?
As I mentioned, some punishment is necessary. When training a dog, we use positive and negative reinforcement. When we are teaching them to heel, a swift jerk on the leash is negative reinforcement (punishment). When they stop immediately when we say "STOP," we reward them with a treat. Training a human is no different in kind from training a dog. It's just more complicated because humans are much smarter than dogs and can figure out ways to cheat much more easily.
Teaching a child not to be a brat in a grocery store has a very objective goal. It is learning that it cannot act as it pleases on a whim. It must conform to social conventions. While I agree with you that the dramatic exchanges you describe are very poorly conceived, and unlikely to be effective, I can't say that the intention isn't good. I, for one, really hate it when people's kids make my shopping experience less pleasurable.
Yes, and all the evidence points to an "imprinting period" between 3 and 12 years of age or so, in which a child's neural networks are being shaped primarily by its environment. That is to say, if it doesn't learn to be socially adept in these years, it's going to be an uphill battle, and very likely a futile one, later.
Don't you know some adults who act just like emotional children when they don't get their way? How much do you want to bet their parents didn't socialize them properly between the ages of 3 and 12? I'll take that bet all day every day, and I'll be sure to come out ahead on average.
Have you ever babysat a child? Seriously. I don't mean that as a rhetorical question. I may not want children of my own, but I have a lot of experience with them. I understand the spirit of what you're saying, but you're going too far in the other direction. There are instances when children need to be reprimanded or punished. The trick is to punish effectively without damaging their emotional stability. It's not the easiest trick in the world, but it can be done. What you're seeing in the grocery store is the result of ineffective socialization on many levels. The parents were not taught how to teach socialization because they were not socialized effectively. They are on the right track -- that is to say, they understand that their child needs to modify its behavior, and that negative reinforcement is the right way to do it. They just have no idea how to pull it off effectively.
Again, think of a dog being trained. When we are teaching a dog to heel, we don't stop and yell at it when it doesn't heel. We just yank on the leash. There are two reasons for doing it this way. First, scaring a dog doesn't focus its mind on its behavior. It just creates a dog that is trying to avoid punishment. Second, yanking the leash firmly but without malice is redirecting the dog's natural responses into a desired behavior. Dogs are focused creatures. When they sniff a fire hydrant, they are completely focused on what they're doing. When they are "pointed" in another direction (by jerking the leash) they are given something else to focus on, namely, the footsteps of their walker.
In the same way, effective negative reinforcement on humans need not be dramatic and emotionally damaging. I think maybe you've equated negative reinforcement with a colloquial understanding of punishment, which is a penalty or damaging action against someone. It need not always be so, although I would make the case that sometimes it is necessary in this sense. When a child beats up the neighbor's kid and steals his lunch money, it's very important to impose a penalty sufficient to make that activity seem undesirable in the future. However, negative reinforcement in a psychological sense is much more broad. Ignoring a child is negative reinforcement, for instance.
Well, in an evolutionary sense (not a Freudian sense), going to the grocery store IS socializing with your kids, but only if you socialize with them. When I was a kid, my dad worked tremendously long hours as a photojournalist, and didn't have time to just hang out doing my thing. Even so, he took me to work with him, and gave me things to do. He taught me the names of all his equipment, taught me how to hold it carefully, and later trusted me to hand him very expensive lenses. He taught me how to use a camera, and how to burn and dodge in the darkroom. In the same way, a parent who takes their kid to the grocery and teaches them how to pick out good fruit, how to figure out a good bargain, and how to predict the family's needs and buy an appropriate amount of food is both socializing their child and reinforcing the parent-child bond. They can reward them for helping dutifully, and for solving challenging problems, and they can punish them for inattention or unsocial behavior. This way, they learn both sides of the coin.
Society is about both reward and punishment, and a parent-child relationship is a microcosm of society.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I think the above discussion of the appropriate use of both positive and negative consequences is better than what I could say. Thank you for the nice explanation.
I don't assume this is socializing. This is getting stuff done. We need milk, grandma needs her pills, and there's no reason my boy can't learn that he's not going to get something every time we go to a store. If strapping him into a cart is what is needed for me to get the milk and for him to understand that he can't have that Diego toy today, then strap him down I will. He needs to understand and see what it takes to run a family and that others have needs. He is not the center of the universe and not every tiny thing we do as a family will be structured for his benefit. His needs are certainly to be taken into account, but balanced with the needs of all members of the family.
I would also note that the breakdowns you see at work are certainly sometimes simply poor parenting. However, other times, you are seeing a combination of a tired adult and an overwhelmed child. There is no perfect parenting. Even the most conscientious parent has times when planned life lessons go awry due to being human. And I do think I've learned more from the times I've screwed up as a parent.
On a more personal note, do you think you could get your manager to move candy and toys both away from the register and out of the reach of children?
Thanks, I know you'll do your best.
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
Just to add more to this clusterfuck...
As I've said before, I don't have kids of my own, but I have more than my fair share of experience with them (which is one of the main reason I'm not having kids, but that's beside the point).
I don't think anyone who's taken care of kids would expect every trip to the store to be a Hallmark Special Moment of learning and interaction. You're right. We all have busy schedules. However, going back to Kevin Brown's generally accurate sentiment, if not completely accurate point, there is a great deal of bad grocery store parenting going on.
I'm a big fan of making the policies fit the facts as opposed to trying to change the facts by changing the policy. As this applies to raising kids, it's pretty clear cut. Most parent-child interaction is not instructional. It's driving them to school or karate practice, and dragging them along when we have no choice but to take them with us to the store. Later, it's watching TV while eating dinner, and then grilling them about whether or not they have their homework done, and then sending them off to bed.
Like it or not, the data is in, and it's incontrovertible. Children who have a lot of social, instructional time with their parents grow up to be smarter, better socially adjusted, and happier adults than those whose parents just carted them around and made sure they got to school and bed on time. It doesn't take a psychologist to figure out that a lot of people with kids treat them more like a job than a responsibility. That is, get the job done as efficiently as possible so you can clock out.
Parenting is a long series of choices. If you want a kid who isn't going to stand out, and is going to be part of the middle of the bell curve, drag him to the grocery store and get your stuff done. If you want him to be smarter and a better critical thinker than everyone else, change your schedule so that you have enough time to socialize with him at the grocery store. If you want him to behave so he won't annoy you, punish him for misbehavior and leave it at that. If you want him to grow up to be a very well balanced person, spend time and energy setting up an environment for him that encourages him to be a good person, and discourages him from being a bad one.
As a personal anecdote, I was a music teacher for about 16 years. I probably taught 500 students in that time, and I can tell you in all honesty that with young children (3-12 or so) there was a 100% Correlation between parents that just left their child in a room with a piano during practice time and children that dropped out of piano. I wish I could say that there was also a 100% correlation between parents who practiced with their children and children who became successful pianists, but there wasn't. Unfortunately, it's really hard, and some kids just don't get there. However, the moral of this story is that the only children who were successful were those whose parents were active participants in their education. This is a lesson for the grocery store.
This is an extremely good point. Some parents feel as if they're failures if they are not devoting all of their time to their children. I find that I cannot even keep friends who act like this because it's very annoying to try to have a conversation with them when their kid is around, and they tend to raise spoiled brats.
As you say, children need to learn that they're not the center of the universe. However, I'd suggest that the best way to do this is in the context of normal social interaction. In other words, when two adults are talking, the child needs to learn to wait until a reasonable break in the conversation unless it's a serious emergency. That's teaching socialization. Teaching a child that he must be completely silent during any adult conversation is not particularly helpful, as it does not teach him how to function in society. As children get older, they need to learn that it's rude to change the conversation to something else anytime they want, but if they have something constructive to add to a conversation, they can do so in the socially appropriate manner.
One way that the friend I mentioned socializes his children is by remembering the mantra that children don't think like adults, but they do think like humans. In other words, if you went to the grocery store with an adult friend, and the friend completely ignored you the whole time, your feelings would be hurt. On the other hand, if your friend seemed preoccupied and was hurrying through the store, you wouldn't feel as slighted, as it would be more socially appropriate for them to be focusing since they are obviously in a big time crunch. In the same way, if it would be rude to ignore an adult friend at the grocery, it's rude to ignore a child. That's teaching socialization. Obviously, you don't have to carry on the same kind of conversation you would with your grown friend, but if you would have time to talk to an adult, you have time to give the kid a problem or two to "help" you solve.
Parents get blamed for an awful lot in our society. Some of it's justified, and some of it isn't. The latest in scientific evidence shows that children are shaped much more by their environment than adults, who seem to be more dominated by their genes. There really isn't such a thing as the "nature-nurture" debate. Nature triggers nurture which triggers nature. One feeds the other in an intertwined loop for as long as a person lives. However, there is a LOT of truth to the statement that kids become who they will be before they reach puberty. As I mentioned in the free will article, there are some things done in childhood that cannot be undone in adulthood, such as sexual abuse.
If we admit that sexual abuse of children has a huge impact on them when they are adults, why would we not admit that being constantly ignored as a child would also have an impact? If we admit that, why would we not admit that being ignored more than the other kids would also have an effect? The simple fact is, everything we do affects a child for the rest of his life in some way or another. That's the nature of the human brain. It's my opinion that if a parent does their best to always treat their child as if their actions will affect what kind of an adult they will be, then they are trying to be a good parent, and that's all we can ask.
Good luck getting that past the marketing department!
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism