Blog Topics
Looking for something specific? The following topics address a wide range of business needs and challenges.
Some Other Things You Need to Know About Performance Baselines
A performance baseline provides the standard against which we measure the effectiveness of our intervention. A change following an intervention relative to the baseline level of the behavior signals…
Measuring Performance: Necessary but Insufficient
“What gets measured, gets done.” If this saying is true, then why are so many people overweight?
I have been recording my weight daily for over 35 years and as I am writing this, I am 4.5…
Backyard Behaviorism: Creating Science Fair Projects in Natural Settings
In a previous commentary I described an experiment in which response keys and a food delivery device was set in a window such that any free-ranging pigeon who happened by could peck the keys and gain…
Things You Need to Know About Performance Baselines: Trend and Bounce
Whether you are teacher evaluating students’ learning of a new academic skill, a manager evaluating the efficiency with which employees perform a task, or a basic researcher investigating the effect…
Turkey in the Oven or in the Skinner Box?
Think about it. You can put a turkey in the oven only once. The pleasure for the turkey is over immediately (well, realistically some days before), and for you not long after the Thanksgiving feast.…
Be Careful What You Read, Even if it’s from the NYT
Can it be that only some people like positive reinforcement? The older I get, the more half-truths and unsupported declarations bug me. Nowhere is this more evident to me than the way writers,…
Wanted: Elf on the Shelf at Work
Is it possible that the walls really do have eyes? Even Santa understands that rewards should not be given unless they are earned, so he has created the elf on the shelf—a person whose job it is to…
The End-of-Year Bonus: When Will Companies Wise Up!
According to Fortune, about 75% of employees will be receiving a holiday bonus this year. Now, this is the point in which I am obliged to say, “Why do companies continue to throw good money…
Reinforcers, Rewards, and Incentives: Are There Differences?
These three terms often appear in reports related to behavior change. A dictionary definition of an incentive is “a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.” The word “reward” is used…
Three Different Ways that Reinforcers Affect Behavior
When presenting some event or activity dependent on a response makes that response more likely in the future, we say that reinforcement of the response has occurred. This sometimes is…
Private Events and the Mind-Body Problem
Anyone who has taken a history of psychology course will no doubt remember an early lecture by their professor on the mind-body problem. If you were a behaviorist back then, you were probably asking…
Overcoming A Toxic Boss
Let me start with the bottom line. Toxic bosses never bring out the best in people. They are bosses who exhibit the kind of behavior that proves detrimental to an employee personally, to their…
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Bite
Here’s a question for all you readers who are parents, walkers, bicyclists, or runners. Have you ever been engaged in any of these activities when a strange, leashless, dog bounds up to you or yours…
Wait, Then Go: The Strange Case of So-Called DRL Schedules
Ever see one of those u-tube videos where the dog has to sit there with a biscuit on its nose while some snarky owner says with pointed finger “Noooooo waaaaaaait” as the dog drools all over the…
Six Ways to Succeed at Budgeting
We all look forward to paying our taxes, right? It’s always nice to know that our hard-earned dollars are going to be used responsibly. Or are they?
A search for ‘government waste’ on Google returns…
Some Ins and Outs of Private Events
No one can deny as an individual having experiences, most commonly described as thoughts and feelings, which are not shared with others. Nor can we unequivocally show that others have such…
Cooperation is Behavior
Individual learning provides much of the scientific foundation of behavioral psychology. A person’s actions are assessed in relation to the physiology, personal history, and current forces…
When Is Behavior “Good Enough?”
When is enough enough? This question has been asked by evolutionary theorists, teachers, employers, and all of the rest of us interested in how people and other living organisms survive and do things…