Psychology in Plain English Quotes

“punishment, including fear of painful physical punishments, we’re not all created equal.  Some people have more tolerance for suffering and pain than others when physical punishments actually occur. Also, when it comes to advance fear of punishments, some people just aren’t very emotionally reactive.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Logical reasoning also is important—there are good, logical reasons to behave well and to avoid bad behavior, and we understand those reasons more completely as we get older and our reasoning abilities improve.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Empathy refers to the fact that we feel the emotions of others, so we share other people’s happiness and suffer other people’s pain.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Martin Hoffman (Hoffman, 1988) has argued that there are three reasons people behavior morally.  They are (in no particular order) Anticipation of immediate or future rewards or punishments Empathy for others Logical reasoning”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“punishments are often only of limited effectiveness, and generally aren’t nearly as effective as most parents or teachers think.  Punishment is our first impulse whenever other people irritate us, but punishment is usually not our best choice as a tool of discipline because it’s so unpredictable in its effects.  Punishment may stop a behavior, but it’s more likely to teach the person how to avoid punishment instead by avoiding getting caught or avoiding the punisher.  Punishment, when used often, causes the punished person to habituate to it, adjusting until the punishment ceases to be anything but the norm and is no longer aversive.  Punishment may also have no effect on the behavior if the reward of the behavior is more pleasurable than the punishment is aversive.  Punishment may actually increase the behavior if the punishment brings attention and attention is something the person craves.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“The attention gained by earning punishment and the positive interactions that follow the punishment, when all has been forgiven, may be well worth suffering the punishment itself,  especially when punishments aren’t all that severe.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Then there are the times when punishment actually increases the frequency of behavior.  This usually happens when the person being punished is bored and receiving very little attention.  Punishment, by its nature, almost always brings attention along with it during the punishment.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“There’s an irony here, because it means that punishment is most effective when it’s used the least.  The more it’s used, the more the person adjusts to it and the less aversive it is.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“habituated to the punishment, and it’s no longer all that aversive.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Reactions to punishment are very similar.  If you seldom experience unpleasantness, but due to punishment things are unpleasant now, you will find that unpleasantness very aversive and you may be highly motivated to end it, possibly even by behaving yourself.  But if your life is always unpleasant, a little unpleasantness right now in the form of punishment is just more of the same, something to be expected, and unlikely to motivate you to change things.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Contextual Theory of Happiness (Parducci, 1968).   Parducci argued that we judge how happy or unhappy we are by comparing what we’re going through now with what we’ve experienced in the recent past.  If things are going much better right now than we remember them going before, we get downright giddy.  If things are going much worse than we remember them being before, we feel unhappy and depressed.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Punishments also may have no effect at all on some behaviors.  This is because humans, and animals too, have a tremendous ability to adapt to just about any level of suffering if they experience it long enough.  If we’re exposed to enough punishment for a long enough period of time, we habituate to it.  We get used to that level of suffering, it becomes the norm, and we learn to live with it.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Any punishment that is less aversive than the behavior is rewarding, will simply be accepted as part of the price of getting the reward.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“To stop such behaviors, a punishment has to be more aversive than the behavior is rewarding.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“The next issue you have to consider, when you contemplate using punishment, is whether the punishment will have any effect on the behavior at all.  Most behaviors that we want to eradicate in other people are occurring because they’re rewarding”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Punishment also motivates the avoidance of being in the vicinity of the punisher.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“despite all the evidence that punishment, at most, causes avoidance of punishment, we persist in believing that punishment makes our children’s and other people’s behaviors less likely.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Time passes very slowly when you’re young.  There are many theories as to why this is the case.  One hypothesis suggests that our subjective experience of the passage of time is directly proportional to how long we’ve previously lived.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“the pleasure of the behavior that we might be punished for is immediate and strong, and if the punishment is distant enough, the potential pleasure of that immediate reward might prevail.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Last but not least, punishment has to be immediate.  The more punishment is delayed, the lower our fear of it.  The decline in fear of punishment as the punishment is delayed in time is quite a steep one.   Even delaying punishment for a particular behavior by a few hours sharply diminishes the fear of the punishment.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Last but not least, punishment has to be immediate.  The more punishment is delayed, the lower our fear of it.  The decline in fear of punishment as the punishment is delayed in time is quite a steep one.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Punishments that are very severe become the focus of attention rather than the behavior being punished.  But punishments that are mild just aren’t aversive enough to stop any behavior worth doing.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Punishments that are very severe become the focus of attention rather than the behavior being punished.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“Punishments must be moderately severe, because mild punishments just aren’t going to stop any behavior that’s very much fun, and very severe punishments will probably distract the child from focusing on the misbehavior to focusing just on the punishment”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“delaying punishment renders it almost as ineffective as avoiding it, at least at the moment we’re doing the potentially punishable behavior.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“But the behavior hasn’t been extinguished – it’s just gone underground.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“When they use punishments on their own children, they cease to see the behavior they’re punishing.  They make the rather naïve assumption that the punishment stopped the behavior,”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“The smile is reinforcing and the frown punishing, even though that may not be our deliberate intent.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“If there’s any way to continue a behavior and avoid a threatened punishment, that’s usually what we’ll do.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English

“punishment, in order to be effective, must meet three criteria.  It needs to be unavoidable, moderately severe, and immediate.”
― Dean Richards, Psychology in Plain English