Changing Behavior Case Study Analysis Essay

A customer approached me because he has a serious hassle with procrastination. My knob has extendd intimately activities that were non comfortable or enjoyable for as far back as he preempt remember. Procrastinated activities include still if are not limited to recompenseing institutionalizes, doing homework assignments, making age on assigned projects in the office, buying presents for birthdays or holidays and scheduling only about anything. Due to this undesirable appearance my node has lost a few jobs, failed out of school and is behind on his mortgage. Of all of these activities my lymph gland would like assistance with procrastination as it relates to gainful bills since that seems to be the most pressing issue. It should be noted that the procrastination has increased in oftenness since childhood. My invitee blames this behavior for the extraordinary amount of accent in his life. unmingled ConditioningClassical Conditioning could be a source of my lymph n odes procrastination. In unspotted conditioning an limitless stimulus is observed to create an unconditioned response. If a conditioned stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus then eventually the conditioned stimulus forget withal evoke the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. The response to a conditioned stimulus is called a conditioned response. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013) In my clients case the unconditioned stimulus was paying bills with the family as a child. currency was tight in his family and the lack of money caused many arguments. The arguments resulted in rattling try outful positionings that my client wanted to head off. To put this in terms of classical conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus was the lack of money. The unconditioned response was an argument that caused stress that my client tried to avoid. Since the arguments over money happened primarily when it was time to pay bills the conditioned stimulus became paying off bills. The conditioned response was to avoid the stress caused by paying bills by procrastinating.The repeated spousal relationship of the stress from list while paying bills strengthened the intrust to avoid the situation resulting in thehabitual behavior problem of procrastination. Had the stress from arguing occurred only occasionally over bills, also known as intermittent pairing (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013), then it may call for been less likely that my client would procrastinate his bill paying. In this scenario you could compare my clients procrastination with the results from Pavlovs experiment with his dogs. Pavlovs experiment measured how much his dogs would salivate when provender was introduced. The food and salivation were the unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response respectively. Pavlov also rang a bell each time he fed the dogs. After several(prenominal) time Pavlov noticed that his dogs would salivate when the bell rang even if there was no food present. In this way the bell became the conditioned stimulus that provoke the conditioned response of the dogs salivating. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013)Operant ConditioningIf we look at my clients behavior from the perspective of operative conditioning then we have to determine if there were reinforcers or punishers that affected the desired, or undesired, behavior. To explain how operative conditioning could cause procrastination we first need to define reinforcers and punishers. In Operant conditioning a reinforcer is some sort of stimulus that is introduced after the desired behavior that encourages the behavior. A punisher on the other glide by is a stimulus that is introduced after the behavior in order to disapprove the behavior. Thorndikes Law of Effect states that behavior that is rewarded often will be stamped in and that behavior that causes some sort of discomfort will be stamped out. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013)Using the same typesetters case we used for classical conditioning, w e will discuss my clients undesired behavior of procrastinating bill payments employ an operant conditioning scenario. In this case paying bills was the behavior. The punisher was the yelling and arguing that caused the feeling of stress. Due to continued exposure to the stress of paying bills my client developed an aversion to paying them. Thus his procrastination could be considered an operant behavior. This is backed up by Thorndikes Law of Effect as stated above. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013)Cognitive and Social Learning TheoriesThe social learning theories can be applied to my clients undesired behavior of procrastination and in my opinion may make more sense than the other two theories of operant and classical conditioning. As a child my client was exposed to the stress caused by lack of money that my client connect to bills. My client learned the behavior that bills were not fun to pay and should be avoided at an early age. This is a blend of cognitive and social learning. M y client did not realize that he had learned to avoid paying bills. This is an example of latent learning since the behavior was learned but had not been demonstrate yet. Edward Chace Tolman was a pioneer in cognitive learning theories who theorized that learning does not have to be observable in order for it to have occurred. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013). The lay out of the unpleasant bill paying experiences was observed from the actions of the parents. My client was not real paying bills as a child so the behavior was observer, or learned vicariously, from the parents as they paid bills. Specifically my client observed a vicarious punishment for the act of paying bills which resulted in a desire to avoid the stress involved in paying bills. This latent behavior manifested later in life as procrastination.RecommendationWhile there are options available with each theory discussed above I would barrack an operant conditioning solution for my client. A reinforcer could be added to the bill paying process in order to make the behavior of paying bills on time more pleasant. The reward would need to be operable but significant enough to overcome the anticipated stress that my client associates with paying bills. Over time the act of paying bills will be associated with pleasant results rather than the stress of his childhood. Thorndike would probably say this behavior is Stamped In to my client once we are finished with the conditioning.ReferencesMorris, C., & Maisto, A. (2013). Understanding psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA Pearson.