INERTIA OF AFFLUENCE, THE

ABSTRACT:

Behavior is highly resistant to change in situations with large and of frequent occurrence reinforcers but weak contingencies relating reinforcers to behavior. This empirical originate may help us to understand on what account patterns of behavior are for a like reason difficult to change in the affluent society of the USA, despite the likelihood that their continuation will overthrow the environment on which we be pendent The argument is illustrated through fossil fuel consumption, especially by means of driving cars for personal transportation, where many require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones are deferred or hidden on the other hand reinforcers are immediate and are experienced in a situation of general affluence. The behavioral moment metaphor accounts for the resistance to change of driving, and of social policies that subsidize driving. Using wind power as an example, the metaphor intimates why local action on behalf of the subsequent time may be successful and in what way support for future-oriented projects may be gained.

Key Words: behavioral impetus fossil fuel consumption, energy subsidies, alternative might local action

In an address to the Association for Behavior Analysis in 1983 (reprinted in Ishaq, 1991) B F Skinner pos the question of "Why we are not acting to save the world" [see visitant Editorial, this issue]. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth, this article expands on his urgent question. My title is taken from McKibben's (1989) article "The extremity of nature," and my arguments are based upon laboratory research on the persistence of behavior and the metaphor of behavioral momentum

Skinner's address began by dint of pointing out some of the ways in which homo sapiens was acting to make its be in possession of future more perilous, such as developing nuclear weapons that could overturn all life, exhausting critical resources, and overpopulating the planet. He then described sum of two units ways of knowing: "by acquaintance" and "by description." The former involves experience in the form of interaction with the world and its contingencies, whereas the latter relies upon verbal behavior in the form of advice, warnings, or predictions. As Skinner said: "Obviously we cannot know the futurity by acquaintance ... and have actual little reason to act because we know it by the agency of description. The more remote the predicted issues the less likely we are to tread in the steps of advice. ... We are also not likely to take the kind of advice called a warning. When the predicted events are aversive, we must thwart or escape from them perhaps by ignoring, forgetting, or otherwise finding ways to escape that do not require solving the problem" (Ishaq, 1991 p 22)

Skinner noted that actions of the sort required to alleviate the threat of coming time catastrophe, such as giving up common practices of consuming and reproducing, were likely to be aversive because they required sacrificing not absent reinforcers. Moreover, he suggested that the at hand conditions of reinforcement were maintained through the short-term interests of the dominant institutions of our time: "If the futuritys of governments, religions and capitalistic a whole s were congruent with the time to come of the species, our point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled would be solved ... Unfortunately, cash and goods are immediate reinforcers that are used to induce tribe to work on behalf of capital, despite overconsumption of irreplaceable resources, [and] weapons are made and used to guarantee the futurity of governments or religions, not species" (Skinner, in Ishaq, 1991 p 23)2

I want to stretch out these points by suggesting that, in addition, action upon behalf of the future is impeded by dint of rich schedules of reinforcement with weak contingencies that operate in the present

An Experimental Model

As an experimentalist, I am greatest in quantity comfortable explaining things by analogy to arrangements in the pigeon lab. Consider an experiment that arranges a multiple schedule with sum of two units components (e.g., Nevin, Tota, Torquato, & Shull 1990) In the one and the other components, a pigeon's key peck bring forward food reinforcers according to a variable-interval (VI) 1-min schedule; that is, the first peck to present itself after an unpredictable interval averaging 1 minute is immediately reinforced. In addition, in individual component, food reinforcers are given independently of responding each 15 seconds-a so-called variable-time (VT) 15- schedule. This constituent exemplifies a rich schedule with weak contingencies. The management is diagrammed in Figure 1

First, upon contingencies. One way to exhibit the response-reinforcer contingency is called the Molar Feedback Function (MFF) which exhibits how the obtained rate of reinforcement be pendents on the rate of responding-the turn topsy-turvy of the usual way of representing the relation between behavior and its events As shown in Figure 2 obtained reinforcement upon a VI schedule increases with reply rate according to an increasing, negatively accelerated function, on the contrary in the VI+VT component, it starts from a high horizontal where response rate is nothing As a result, the relative incremental improvement in reinforcement, for a given increase in rejoinder rate, is smaller in the VI+VT composing than in the VI constituent Not surprisingly, after several hours of training, answer rate is lower in the VI+VT composing because the response-reinforcer contingency is weaker.