IS OPERANT CONDITIONING (REWARD/PUNISHMENT SYSTEM) TRULY FUNCTIONAL?

We are mostly socially conditioned with the reward-punishment strategy, which is generally referred to as operant conditioning. It is a treatment style our parents mostly use on us, and it is the style their parents also used on them and so on and so on.

What the reward-punishment strategy entails is simple. When a person does something, we consider good or benevolent or moral, perhaps such as when a child obeys their parents, we reward them. We reward them either by praising them or medaling them with social status. This way, the person wants to keep doing this benevolent, moral, good deed. However, when they do something, we consider bad or harmful, we punish them. That way, this person will not be endeared to repeat such an action.

The theory is a simple one. When people are rewarded for action or gesture, they want to keep repeating it. However, when they are punished for their actions, they want to stop doing them. It does sound logical, does it not? However, this theory is the ‘untruest’ phenomenon.

If we use this method to train a dog or an antelope, it would work. In fact, it is fundamental why brainwashing works. If every time an animal or a person performs a random action, they are jolted with an uncomfortable amount of electricity, they will learn to associate that action with pain, and ideally, they will avoid that action. It is roughly the method used in training animals. So why would anyone think the same methods in domesticating animals are suitable for humans?

A vast majority of human beings have been trained and conditioned through these principles, and this is why the world we live in is so chaotic. Human beings are basically behaving as erratic as animals. The reason why this method is not suitable for people is so obvious – because animals and people are different. People are more aware and social than animals are. Hence, controlling their actions in such a way as one would control an animal – baiting them to perform ‘good’ actions by rewarding it and controlling them to avoid ‘bad’ actions by punishing it – also means that humans are not encouraged to be humans. They are not taught to be self-aware of their uniqueness and what makes them different.

Our actions are always influenced by how we identify ourselves, and if we do not have awareness of our own identity, our actions and our beliefs will only be a reflection of other people – the people who construct us with the reward/punishment system. Any sensible person can easily realize that more and more humans have never gained self-awareness because we have given birth to a progression of parents who use the reward/punishment systems.

Young people mindlessly run after social status – money, education, marriage – and the essence of life itself is losing meaning. We have uneducated graduates, married people who are not in love, and friends who betray each other because people are only conditioned, through the reward/punishment system, to follow external rewards. Let us discuss a real-life scenario that shows how useless and devastating this reward/punishment system is, and points to a healthier alternative.

Crime rates in Norway were climbing at an all-time high in the 70s. During these periods, 70% of the prisoners who were released reoffended within two years. Then in the 90s, the prison system was reformed, and the strategy focused on rehabilitation rather than take punitive measures. Hence, they did not punish us for bad like our parents have been doing. Instead, they investigated why the criminals were into crime in the first place and attempted to correct it. Punishing for wrong-doing is vindictiveness and revenge. It causes more damage and increases the rate at which bad and evil happen. Norway’s prison reformation worked, and Norway became one of the countries with the lowest crime rates.

You see, no one wakes up one morning to decide to do bad things. A story comes to mind. The story of a young man who stole his brother’s laptop to raise money. His brother found out and was justifiably angry. His brother paid policemen to put him in a cell for over a year. Serves the thief right, you may think. However, our man was angry. ‘How can my brother do this to me?’, he pondered inside prison. By the time he got out, he was fully sold on to the life of crime.

Another area we will see that the reward/punishment style is not efficient in raising healthy people is in the area of addiction.

Oxford dictionary defines addiction as “the fact of the condition of being addicted to a particular substance or activity.” However, addiction at its core is escape. Addiction happens when a person is so stressed by their external situation that they find that they have to depend on stimulants or activities to relieve themselves from constant stress. If one truly ponders the subject, one realizes that it is not only stimulants that are addictive. We have many people who think they are addiction-free but are addicted to belief systems, doctrines and even activities such as shopping.

Society reacts to the addict by punishing them. Of course, it is bad to be an addict and so the suitable reaction should be punishment. Untrue. The addict is an addict because of stress. It will be illogical to try to treat the addict by further causing stress by punishment. Punishing the addict drives them into more addiction. In fact, many addicts became addicts mainly because the people around them punished them for not conforming to their definitions of good and bad.

The reward/punishment styles of treating people do either one of two things:

1. It conditions people to be dependent on social validations and statuses. It is why people will keep doing the same thing even when nothing is changing for the better. People will keep going seeking education even when education is deteriorating. People will keep getting married even when divorce rates are increasing. People will kill, and die, to get money. It is not that these things bring them anything good directly. It is because these things give social validation, and there is nothing more intoxicating and rewarding than social validation. It takes people to work and change their society especially when it is not working. However, these sorts of people, trained to so depend on social validation, are not people. They have been trained like animals. They are like the domesticated dog who lives only for a pat on his head.

2. It conditions people to not cling to drugs and other stimulants to escape. Ever wondered why there is a drug epidemic? The reward/punishment system punishes people for doing anything other than they have been conditioned to do. However, some people are more self-aware and would like to carve their own path. Yet it is these people that suffer under this system because they are conditioned by brute force to abide by the status quo. In other to survive the inhumanity this system exerts on them, they have to cling to some kind of escape.

I have included images of Norwegian prison below, perhaps to mould our attention around the disaster of the reward/punishment style, and perhaps to encourage us to consider that the style of treating people is only a reflection of our inner narcissism to control people into doing our biddings. As parents we always want our kids to do what we think is good and bad, and to never question us. This grooming method is only good for domesticating animals. Human beings, at whatever level, should always be encouraged to pursue their highest self-actualization, especially when that actualization may not be in tune with our ideals.

Perhaps the most difficult activity for most people is admitting our ignorance. We feel ‘less’ when we admit that we do not know, but let us face it, we do not know. We do not know the future, or what it will bring. We do not know who God is or what his plans are for us. We do not know if God is in heaven. We do not know 90% of the matter in space. We do not know, and if we do admit that we do not know and that we ourselves are just guessing our way through – learning and unlearning, who then are we to punish or reward people for things we are not sure if are good or bad?