Four Functions of Behavior (Part 3/4)

Do you ever see someone doing something odd and wonder, “why in the hell are they doing that?”  Well, according to behaviorists, it’s for one of four possible reasons. In fact, ALL human behavior is possibly broken down into one of four possible reasons.  An easy acronym to remember them by is “everybody EATS.” E is for escape, A is for attention, T is for tangibles, and S is for sensory. I’ll go over each on in a separate blog post so it doesn’t become too overwhelming, but I highly suggest reading all four posts.

The third behavior we’re going to talk about is tangible motivated behaviors.  This basically means the person is doing something because they want some tangible object.  This could be anything. Cookies. Water. TV. A raise. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go to work because it gets me out of other things I should be doing, or it makes people notice me.  I do it because it makes me money in order to live and enjoy life the way I want to enjoy it. So when we do tangible seeking behaviors, it’s not necessarily a bad thing; however, this is most often the function of a behavior in your classic temper tantrums (whether we’re talking about kids OR adults).

So typically the way to keep tangible seeking behaviors going (the ones we like) is to keep positively reinforcing it.  You want me to keep showing up for work? Keep paying me. But what should you do when you want to decrease that tangible seeking behavior.

Well, in the first place, DON’T GIVE THEM THE THING THEY ARE SEEKING!! When a child is screaming in the grocery store because he wants a cookie, PLEASE do not give him a cookie.  Because if you do, you are reinforcing the screaming (confusing? We’ll talk about reinforcement versus punishment in another post).  

So how do we get him to stop screaming?  Ignore the behavior, and batten down the hatches until the storm passes.  Because we do not want the behavior to continue, we need to wait until it subsides.  Once they are calm, you can do a few different things depending on your goal. If you’re ok with giving the child a cookie if he asks NICELY, then when he’s finished screaming say, “if you want a cookie, you need to ask nicely.”  Once they have done that, give them the cookie. If you’re still not wanting to give the cookie, continue to ignore the behavior. Eventually it will extinguish (stop).

I know this is hard.  I know the screaming is uncomfortable.  I know you just want it to end. All temper tantrums have a timeline.  If you are consistent, you will notice that eventually this behavior will stop.  Because when we don’t get what we want by doing the thing we’re doing, we will adapt and change.  

The key is teaching them the alternative behavior and reinforcing it as soon as possible (i.e. asking nicely).  Eventually the reinforcement of the behavior you want will override the screaming, and then you can get a pleasant tangible seeking behavior instead of an irritating one.

When do you notice tangible seeking behaviors in your everyday life?  Which ones do you want to change? I’m happy to help with that.

Next time, we’ll be talking about the last function of behavior: sensory.  Because times we just wanna feel GOOD.