April 5, 2016

April 5, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand explains religious behavior as arising “in the context of exposure to response-independent schedules of reinforcement. That behavior and its persistence are induced (i.e. emergent) in a complex response that was not specially shaped into existence.” This writer, however, believes there are other “reinforcement-resistant” behaviors, which overlap with religious behavior and, therefore, have the exact same origin. Many behaviors, which are usually called symptoms of those who are afflicted with mental disorders, are resistant to reinforcement as they are neither caused nor shaped by reinforcement. 

Not much ground can be gained in successfully altering mental health problem behaviors as long as they are viewed from the operant paradigm. Moreover, the wrong etiology of behavior is especially obvious in how we talk about it. It is no coincidence that the two universal response classes: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), are still unknown to behaviorists, who give short shrift to respondent conditioning.

The “reinforcement-resistant” nature of mankind’s ways of talking deals with how we sound and predates the arrival of language. Indeed, our sounds set the stage for SVB and NVB. These simple “behaviors and its persistence are induced (i.e. emergent).” It is only because we are fixated on the verbal that SVB and NVB, religious behavior as well as pathological behavior (!?), seem to be “a complex response that was not specially shaped into existence.” 

Once we analyze the SVB/NVB distinction from a classical conditioning paradigm, we become clear on mankind’s biggest problems: communication, superstition and mental health problems. The tenacity and ubiquity of NVB is explained by one thing only: aversive environments. The absence or the relatively low rates of SVB is explained by the lack of safe environments. As long as we are not aware of the SVB/NVB distinction, we make it seem as if hostile environments are safe and as if safe environments are threatening. Religion has been our way of making it seem as if unsafe environments are safe. Truly safe environments are function of SVB, which is a scientific way of communicating. Without the SVB/NVB distinction our religious explanatory fictions will continue as our analysis of speech is operant and incomplete.