Strategies of Remitting or Decelerating Undesirable Behaviors
Scientists have proven that human mind is negatively biased. One of the implications is the fact that they tend to focus more on correcting evil than on spreading good. After realizing this, some psychologist started to change the techniques of remitting or decelerating undesirable behaviors. See the strategies!
Undesirable behaviors could be of any kind, starting from smoking and ending up with procrastination. Usually, these behaviors are called undesirable because they interfere with the normal way of doing things, or because they are causing health, social, or psychological problems. They may also cause distress or disability. Psychologists found a series of strategies that lead to the extinction of the targeted behaviors or at least to their reduction, in intensity or in frequency.
Before introducing the strategies, there is a detail which led to the development of these strategies. Most of the strategies used before or some that are still used by the great majority only concentrate on the reducing of the bad behavior. Generalized, this idea means that people concentrate on reducing the evil and they invest less or at all in doing good or in spreading it.
The cause is very well explained and documented in one of Baumaster's articles, called "Bad's stronger than good". He says that the human mind is biased towards negativity. During negative emotions, the brain processes the information faster and deeper, then encodes and retrieves information easier. Translated in real life, this means that we learn so much more from failures than from success, sadness lasts longer than happiness and because of this, as it is stated earlier, we have a much stronger tendency to reduce evil than to develop good.
Scientists observed that working only on the reduction of evil or undesirable behavior as not very efficient. Therefore, they empirically sustain the idea that intervention is most efficient if it works on acquiring alternative or adequate behaviors simultaneously with reducing the undesirable one. The explanation is that negative behaviors - as any other behavior - has some functions in the individual's life. In order to remit or decelerate it, we need to offer positive behaviors which have the same functions. The following strategies are presented accordingly to their efficiency, starting from the most powerful to the least.
The acceleration of a contrary behavior
In the first strategy, the contrary behavior refers to the exact opposite of the negative one. For example, if one has anxiety, the opposite behavior would be relaxation. There are a lot of relaxing techniques which can be successfully used when one has an anxiety attack.
Complementary behavior acceleration
The second strategy refers to the acceleration of a complementary behavior, complementary from a functional point of view. This means that this kind of behavior leads to the same result or state of mind as the negative one and it is not necessarily opposite. For example, if a person eats in a compulsory way, and eating here has the function of bringing pleasure, maybe because that person is stuck in an office all day, it is useful to find another behavior which could lead to the same purpose of bringing pleasure. This could be a hobby for example. If this second strategy doesn't work, there is a third one, called the acceleration of any other behavior than the targeted one.
The acceleration of any other behavior than the targeted one
The difference is that this behavior is not opposite to the negative one, nor it has the same function of the negative one. For example, if a person has clinical depression, she could hide in routine. This would make her life go on, even though her feelings and cognition tell her the exact opposite. All these strategies have the aim of remitting a certain negative behavior and what is important is that one doesn't focus so much on what no to do, but rather what to do.
Another set of strategies refers to the reduction of the targeted behavior. One of these strategies is named "deceleration through extinction". The purpose of this strategy is to make the person see no causality between a specific situation and a behavior. If for example a person has a phobia he keeps on avoiding specific contexts. This kind of behavior is to be extinct. The person is placed exactly in that context and gradually the person realizes that the certain environment does not do him any harm. Another method is to reduce the behavior through reinforcements by stimulating a desirable behavior and by punishing and undesirable one.
In conclusion, the methods presented above have the premise that is more efficient to remit or decelerate a behavior not by working intensively on getting rid of the negative part but putting more effort in developing new, positive behaviors.
Before introducing the strategies, there is a detail which led to the development of these strategies. Most of the strategies used before or some that are still used by the great majority only concentrate on the reducing of the bad behavior. Generalized, this idea means that people concentrate on reducing the evil and they invest less or at all in doing good or in spreading it.
The cause is very well explained and documented in one of Baumaster's articles, called "Bad's stronger than good". He says that the human mind is biased towards negativity. During negative emotions, the brain processes the information faster and deeper, then encodes and retrieves information easier. Translated in real life, this means that we learn so much more from failures than from success, sadness lasts longer than happiness and because of this, as it is stated earlier, we have a much stronger tendency to reduce evil than to develop good.
Scientists observed that working only on the reduction of evil or undesirable behavior as not very efficient. Therefore, they empirically sustain the idea that intervention is most efficient if it works on acquiring alternative or adequate behaviors simultaneously with reducing the undesirable one. The explanation is that negative behaviors - as any other behavior - has some functions in the individual's life. In order to remit or decelerate it, we need to offer positive behaviors which have the same functions. The following strategies are presented accordingly to their efficiency, starting from the most powerful to the least.
The acceleration of a contrary behavior
In the first strategy, the contrary behavior refers to the exact opposite of the negative one. For example, if one has anxiety, the opposite behavior would be relaxation. There are a lot of relaxing techniques which can be successfully used when one has an anxiety attack.
Complementary behavior acceleration
The second strategy refers to the acceleration of a complementary behavior, complementary from a functional point of view. This means that this kind of behavior leads to the same result or state of mind as the negative one and it is not necessarily opposite. For example, if a person eats in a compulsory way, and eating here has the function of bringing pleasure, maybe because that person is stuck in an office all day, it is useful to find another behavior which could lead to the same purpose of bringing pleasure. This could be a hobby for example. If this second strategy doesn't work, there is a third one, called the acceleration of any other behavior than the targeted one.
The acceleration of any other behavior than the targeted one
The difference is that this behavior is not opposite to the negative one, nor it has the same function of the negative one. For example, if a person has clinical depression, she could hide in routine. This would make her life go on, even though her feelings and cognition tell her the exact opposite. All these strategies have the aim of remitting a certain negative behavior and what is important is that one doesn't focus so much on what no to do, but rather what to do.
Another set of strategies refers to the reduction of the targeted behavior. One of these strategies is named "deceleration through extinction". The purpose of this strategy is to make the person see no causality between a specific situation and a behavior. If for example a person has a phobia he keeps on avoiding specific contexts. This kind of behavior is to be extinct. The person is placed exactly in that context and gradually the person realizes that the certain environment does not do him any harm. Another method is to reduce the behavior through reinforcements by stimulating a desirable behavior and by punishing and undesirable one.
In conclusion, the methods presented above have the premise that is more efficient to remit or decelerate a behavior not by working intensively on getting rid of the negative part but putting more effort in developing new, positive behaviors.
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