SENG3011

Recap: Why do people behave the way they do?

• The individual
  • Personality 
  • Capability
• The organisation
• The situation
• People behave how they have been conditioned to behave
• Everyone's behaviour makes sense from their point of view

Behavioural consequences

• Behaviour is a function of its consequences
  • People do what they do because of what happens to them when they do it
  • Performance is what about happens every day
• Behavioural consequences - those things and events which follow a behaviour and change the probability that the behaviour will be repeated in the future 
• Most of the behavioural consequences we encounter we don't think about (e.g. turning on a light, typing on a keyboard)

ABCs of Human Behaviour

• Antecedent (the situation preceding the action)
• Behaviour (the action itself)
• Consequence (the outcome of the action) - reinforcer
• AKA - Given, When, Then
• Difference between can't do and won't do
  • If someone did something correctly in the recent past, but isn't doing it anymore - it's probably a won't do

Three dimensions to a reinforcer

• Positive / negative - is the consequence positive or negative from the perspective of the performer?
• Immediate / future - does the consequence occur as the behaviour is happening (immediate) or some time later (future)
• Certain / uncertain - what is the probability that the performer will experience the consequence?

Example: Recycling

Example: Writing tests for your code in SENG3011

Can we spot a pattern of consequences types?

The price of negative reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement incentivises maximum performance, while negative reinforcement gets a level of performance that is just enough to get by to escape the unpleasant consequence
• Indicators that negative reinforcement is present:
  • People get things done just in time
  • Most of the work happens in the last few days (J-curve)
  • Negative talk
  • Performance goes flat after reaching a goal
  • When you remove a performance requirement and performance drops

Negative reinforcement has its place

• Negative reinforcement serves us well when all we need is compliance/minimum performance
• If you can't find anything to positively reinforce, then the person is probably in need of some negative reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement needs to be paired with positive reinforcement of improvement
• B. Franklin "Write people's accomplishments in stone and their faults in the sand"

The tricky thing about negative reinforcement

• Negative reinforcement is more likely to provide us (the reinforcers) with a PIC than positive reinforcement
• We need to wait until the next time a behaviour occurs to see if the reinforcement work (PFU)

Positive reinforcement

• Discretionary effort - the level of effort people could give if they wanted to, but is beyond what is required
• Natural - e.g. turning on a light
• Created - must be added by a person
  • Social - involves doing or saying something to another person and has trophy value (e.g. a compliment)
  • Tangible - an object and has salvage value (e.g. a toaster)
  • All tangible reinforcers should be paired with social reinforcement
• Find reinforcers for people: ask, try, observe
  • Different people will have different reinforcers 

Positive reinforcement

• Grandma's Law - if you eat your veggies, you can have dessert
• Pair actions that aren't reinforcing with ones that are
• Sources of positive reinforcement:
  • Work-related reinforcement - when we arrange a task so that reinforcement is automatically associated with the task (e.g. green CI ticks, tests passing)
  • Peer-related - from peers at work - in best position to deliver PICs, can observe performance more closely and more often
  • Management-related 

Decreasing behaviour

• Punishment + Penalty
• Don't shoot the messenger
• Delayed punishment is no more effective than delayed reinforcement
• Punished behaviours should be paired with positively reinforced replacement behaviours
• Recovery - old behaviour resurfaces

Extinction

• Doing nothing changes behaviour
• Extinction - withholding or not delivering reinforcement for previously reinforced behaviour
• "Just ignore it and it'll go away"
• Signs of extinction
  • Extinction burst (e.g. lift button)
  • Erratic/emotional behaviour
  • Resurgence

Errors in delivering reinforcement

• Perception - does the performer find it reinforcing?
• Contingency - must be if and only if (desired behaviour) then (reinforcement)
• Delay - optimal reinforcement is immediate
• Frequency - has to happen at a frequent rate (annual, quarterly, monthly isn't frequent enough)
• 5 to 1 rule - 1 negative remark equals 5 positive remarks
• ... "but" ...
• Shit sandwich - avoid pairing positive reinforcement with punishment
  • Shit sandwich is still good for feedback

Let's revisit our incentive examples

• In a business context:
  • Wages/salaries
  • Bonus for reaching annual targets
  • Performance appraisal (quarterly review)
  • Employee of the month
  • Disciplinary procedures
• In a university context:
  • Marks
  • Activity is fun
• At home (for kids)
  • Treat foods
  • Screen time