Taking the idea for discussion from Mariposa's blog, I thought that I'd write a bit about change. Or rather, resistance to change.
One of the areas of study in behavioural psychology is how to create changes in behaviour. There are four broad options, each with many subsets. These are: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. In this case, the positive and negative refer to either presenting a stimulus or removing a stimulus respectively. So negative reinforcement is removing an unpleasant stimulus as a reward, and positive punishment is delivering an unpleasant stimulus.
An interesting thing is found when performing behavioural experiments involving behaviour change. In the vast majority of cases, when trying to remove an unwanted behaviour there is a period during which the behaviour occurs more frequently and/or with greater intensity before decreasing steadily. This is called an extinction burst.
Most people have experience with this phenomenon; who hasn't seen a parent in a grocery store trying to get a child to stop a tantrum, only to have it become more intense? Or when training a dog to stop jumping up, for a while it will jump up more than it did before. It is something which requires a bit of patience to get past, but at the same time indicates that the means of removing the behaviour is likely going to be eventually effective.
It is my belief that this is occurring on a larger scale within human society, or at least 'Western' society. Since the Enlightenment and subsequent Renaissance, the influence of religion in life has somewhat decreased. However, the idea of atheism/agnosticism was still considered repellent until the late 19th century. Even since then, it was perhaps not until the late 1960s that it became acceptable (although perhaps still strange) to identify as non-religious. Today it is more acceptable than ever to be an atheist, and yet it seems that those who remain religious are louder and more aggressive than ever. There seem to be fewer moderate religious people, and more appear to be gravitating toward the extremes. I don't claim to be an expert on either psychology or sociology, but to me this appears to be a social extinction burst for the behaviour of superstition.
But then again, it is hard to tell since the time-frame is much longer for social behaviour changes as compared to the behaviour of a single organism. Time will tell, and I look forward to seeing how this change develops.
One of the areas of study in behavioural psychology is how to create changes in behaviour. There are four broad options, each with many subsets. These are: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. In this case, the positive and negative refer to either presenting a stimulus or removing a stimulus respectively. So negative reinforcement is removing an unpleasant stimulus as a reward, and positive punishment is delivering an unpleasant stimulus.
An interesting thing is found when performing behavioural experiments involving behaviour change. In the vast majority of cases, when trying to remove an unwanted behaviour there is a period during which the behaviour occurs more frequently and/or with greater intensity before decreasing steadily. This is called an extinction burst.
Most people have experience with this phenomenon; who hasn't seen a parent in a grocery store trying to get a child to stop a tantrum, only to have it become more intense? Or when training a dog to stop jumping up, for a while it will jump up more than it did before. It is something which requires a bit of patience to get past, but at the same time indicates that the means of removing the behaviour is likely going to be eventually effective.
It is my belief that this is occurring on a larger scale within human society, or at least 'Western' society. Since the Enlightenment and subsequent Renaissance, the influence of religion in life has somewhat decreased. However, the idea of atheism/agnosticism was still considered repellent until the late 19th century. Even since then, it was perhaps not until the late 1960s that it became acceptable (although perhaps still strange) to identify as non-religious. Today it is more acceptable than ever to be an atheist, and yet it seems that those who remain religious are louder and more aggressive than ever. There seem to be fewer moderate religious people, and more appear to be gravitating toward the extremes. I don't claim to be an expert on either psychology or sociology, but to me this appears to be a social extinction burst for the behaviour of superstition.
But then again, it is hard to tell since the time-frame is much longer for social behaviour changes as compared to the behaviour of a single organism. Time will tell, and I look forward to seeing how this change develops.
