November 28, 2014

November 28, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer,

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer considers himself a behavioral engineer, a verbal engineer. He creates and maintains the contingency for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In doing so, he establishes a verbal community that didn’t exist before. The monthly seminars, which now take place at his house, are a new phase in his work. More and more this writer is asked to write about SVB. This stimulates him to write.

Although it matters a great deal what we say, what matters in SVB is how we sound. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB),  how we sound doesn’t matter at all. Consequently, in  NVB we just sound horrible, but in SVB we sound pleasant. One may think that what sounds horrible to one person, may sound pleasant to another, but, once the distinction between SVB and NVB has been made, we all agree that only SVB sounds good and NVB always sounds awful. Certainly, we will continue to have NVB as long as we don’t agree on what we sound like. SVB is based on our nonverbal agreement that we sound good. However, in SVB we also verbally agree. We are more likely to agree verbally when we already agree non-verbally. Also, we are more likely to figure out why we verbally disagree, when we keep non-verbally agreeing on how we sound. When we don’t agree non-verbally, about how we sound, we can’t agree verbally. It won't happen. This is why much of what goes on in the name of spoken communication, what this author calls NVB, a complete waste of time and energy. 

Once people know the difference between SVB and NVB, they want NVB to stop and they want SVB to continue. If they want NVB to continue this indicates that they don't yet discriminate the he difference between SVB and NVB. We continue with NVB, because it doesn’t give us any choice. Only SVB gives options to choose from. Since we have had so little SVB, we usually don't have a  choice between the two. If we have had more SVB, it was by coincidence, but not by choice. Yet, we keep having NVB all the time and we think that we choose it, but only when NVB has been stopped, during SVB, do we have a choice. Only when we are out of it do we realize we were having NVB.

The absence of NVB makes SVB possible.The choice, which only becomes available during SVB, is obtained because we listen to ourselves while we speak. In SVB, we also listen to others, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing in SVB is to listen to our selves. In NVB, we want others to listen to us and this is the most important thing. In NVB, others want us to listen to them, but nobody is listening to him or herself. In SVB, by contrast, everyone is listening to him or herself, while he or she speaks. This creates a different focus, because due to our self-listening, we begin to listen to others in the same way as we listen to ourselves. Moreover, due to our self-listening, we speak to others overtly in the same way that we speak to ourselves covertly. Thus, in SVB, when others are speaking, the covert speech of the mediator, the listener, is the same as the overt speech of the verbalizer, the speaker. In NVB however, the covert speech of the mediator is different from and therefore distracts from the overt speech of the verbalizer and this is caused by the fact that in NVB we listen differently to ourselves than we listen to others. All mediators reinforce the verbalizer in SVB, but in NVB, phony mediators reinforce phony verbalizers without even realizing it. 

In behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, we explain behavior by considering antecedents, responses and postcedents. Antecedents are stimuli which happen before the response occurs and set the stage for the behavior to occur. Postcedents or consequences, are events that happen after the behavior has occurred. Postcedents can be reinforcing, in which case the response rate is increased, or punishing, in which case the response rate is decreased. When a response produces the postcedent that follows it, it is called a consequence. SVB is a response which produces its postcedent. Why is this important? It is important because the difference between SVB and NVB is not capricious. Human behavior is lawful. For all the havoc and chaos that NVB creates, it always predictably does so. SVB, by contrast, will equally predictably produce very different behaviors. 

When thinking about causation of behavior, most people are inclined to think of antecedent stimuli. Although we may know there can be positive or negative consequences to our behavior, we wrongly believe that we either choose to have these consequences or that we decide to avoid them. The fact is that we don’t cause our own behavior. Most of our behavior is caused postcendently, but as long as we think that we are causing our own behavior, we will not be considerate about these postcedents. Our view of causing our own behavior has kept us stuck into short-term ways of thinking. Only when we adopt a scientific account of human behavior, will we develop reliable long-term thinking.