May 11, 2016

May 11, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

When we have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) this is not because we decide to have it, but because the contingencies of reinforcement determine that only NVB is possible. NVB is difficult to accept, because we continue to think that we are causing it. We are embarrassed to have NVB and we would all like to be known as someone who only engages in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We attribute positive qualities to such a person and would say that he or she is friendly, empathic, patient, truthful, funny, intelligent or sensitive. We say that someone has a certain communication style or personality and we assume this person’s actions are caused by this. This is rubbish. What we are talking about here is that a person has a particular behavioral history. It is because of this behavioral history that he or she acts the way he or she does. If there would have been a different behavioral history, this person would have acted very differently. A person is not this or that way, a person is the way he or she is, because of what he or she has gone through. To say that a person is that way is to imprison this person in his or her past. We can be different from what we have been, if our current environment is different from our past environment. It is because this is generally not the case that we remain the same and that we are inclined to think that we are this or that way and that other people are also this or that way. The fact is, however, they are not this or that way, that is, they are something entirely different from what they have been in an environment which has a different effect on them then their previous environments. Certainly, we have been strongly affected by our previous environments, but this doesn’t mean that different environments won’t have a different effect on us. It is because we can’t stay in a different environment long that we are not affected. We avoid different environments. When we engage in SVB instead of NVB, we don’t continue with it long enough to be conditioned by it. This is not our fault, but it is because we haven’t figured out the contingencies that make SVB possible.