Comment by gress
10 years ago
Prediction and control is not the only paradigm for causing behavior change, indeed it may frequently be the least appropriate one.
10 years ago
Prediction and control is not the only paradigm for causing behavior change, indeed it may frequently be the least appropriate one.
Prediction and control is what science rests on whether we're talking about behavior or physics. You can't prove that an independent variable (IV) caused a change in a dependent variable (e.g., behavior) unless you can predict and control it by systematically manipulating the IV while observing changes in the DV.
However, this is way beyond the scope of the original blog post or my original comment. In my first comment, I offered an alternative description of a phenomenon that the author described. You suggested that I was advocating for "strict behaviorism." That wasn't the case, so I clarified. At this point, I'm not sure what the purpose of this discussion is.
The purpose is to point out that people sharing information about how they think about things is a valid a way of influencing behavior. You are simply wrong to dismiss that.
I agree that humans influencing each other through talking about how they think about things is a hard phenomenon to reduce to the kind of science that you are advocating, but that is a limitation of your preferred methods, and it's inappropriate to dismiss phenomena just because you don't have a good way to understand them.
> "The purpose is to point out that people sharing information about how they think about things is a valid a way of influencing behavior. You are simply wrong to dismiss that."
I agree that people sharing information about how they think about things may INFLUENCE behavior. In your previous comment you used the term "cause." These are very different words, especially when we are talking about science. It's not clear what you think I dismissed.
> "inappropriate to dismiss phenomena just because you don't have a good way to understand them."
I never suggested that we dismiss phenomena. If you read my original comment, I agreed with the authors general premise but I offered an alternative explanation: "This phenomenon is better described by the concept of immediacy of reinforcement. As one decreases the delay to reinforcement, the strength of behavior maintained by that reinforcer increases."
Thus, I'm not sure what your point is.
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