Coercion causes problems. The scientist who led the effort to discover the parameters of punishment and coercion in the experimental laboratory, Dr. Murry Sidman, called these problems “fallout.” He called the three main types of this fallout “escape,” “avoidance,” and “countercoercion.”
Initially those networks became connected by gene–directed growth. Later, restructuring occurs—throughout life, on a moment by moment basis—due to the energy traces from conditioning processes. Physiology–discipline resources provide more details, which leads me (And you?) to love the coordination and cooperation that inheres among natural–science disciplines, along with their usually timely self–correcting interactions.
Consequences divide into various types that we detail later. Our concern just now is their status as either “reinforcing” or “punishing” consequences, because this characteristic pertains to the central role of consequences. This central role involves consequences either making responses occur more often, in which case the consequence earns the title “reinforcer,” or making responses occur less often, in which case the consequence earns the title “punisher.”
Last time we took a quick look at contingency causes of behavior through the oversimplified “A—B—Cs of behaviorology.” A slightly more realistic formula, “A—B—P,” refers mostly to events in time and stands for “Antecedents—Behaviors—Postcedents.” We will quickly see this develop into many fully realistic versions, a common one of which is “Evocative Stimulus—Response—Consequential Stimulus.”
