We prefer appropriate behavior, which benefits from plenty of added reinforcement. We consider inconsequential behavior as relatively benign although annoying behavior that benefits from active ignoring.
Engaging alternatives to coercion provides the best way to reduce the “get away, stay away, get even” fallout from coercion. Our specific alternatives to coercion focus on some different ways to deal with three categories of behavior. These categories cover appropriate behaviors, inconsequential behaviors, and inappropriate behaviors.
Dr. Glenn Latham spent decades working with parents at home and teachers at school. He was discovering the particulars of some parent and teacher behaviors that affect much of the behavior and misbehavior of children. He also helped design many of the best practices that help change these parent and teacher behaviors so that they lead to more appropriate child behavior at home and school (references to some of his books appear at the end of this column).
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.”
Many people easily accept that those processes exert control over behavior. Some, however, only see or acknowledge such coercive controls, and think that the rest of behavior is free. But the real connection is more surprising and more beneficial.
Since the causes of behavior are cast in terms of “contingencies,” the time has come to make some sense of the term “contingency.” This term stands in generically for the range of “causes” of behavior the way other terms cannot, such as “stars,” in astrology, or “selves,” in psychology.
