Let us look at a social episode from the point of view of one of the participants. We have seen that A may generate important variables affecting the behavior of B. The change in B may not have a return effect upon A. For example, B may look in a shop window because he sees A doing so although A may be unaffected by B’s action. Usually, however, as in many of the examples already analyzed, the resulting change in B’s behavior has an effect upon A. In the important case now to be considered the effect is one of reinforcement. A behaves in a way which alters B’s behavior because of the consequences which B’s behavior has for A. We say, colloquially, that A is deliberately controlling B. This does not mean that A is necessarily able to identify the cause or effect of his action. When a baby cries for his mother’s attention, he generates an aversive stimulus which he withdraws when the mother pays attention. As a result, the behavior of the mother in paying attention is reinforced. Neither the baby nor the mother may understand the processes involved, but we may still say that the baby has learned how to control his mother in this respect. It is this asymmetrical social relation which we have now to investigate. Our task is to evaluate the various ways in which one person controls another.
The power to manipulate the conditions affecting another individual may be delegated to the controlling individual by one of the organized agencies to be discussed in Section V. The controller’s relation to the controllee may then be characterized as that of governor to governed, priest to communicant, therapist to patient, employer to employee, teacher to pupil, and so on. But almost everyone controls some relevant variables, apart from such a rôle, which he may employ to his own advantage. This we may speak of as personal control. The kind and extent depend upon the personal endowment and skill of the controller. The strong man uses the variables which derive from his strength. The wealthy man resorts to money. The pretty girl uses primary or conditioned sexual reinforcement. The weakling becomes a sycophant. The shrew controls through aversive stimulation.
When compared with the practices of organized agencies, personal control is nevertheless weak. A man of great wealth, a gangster with a gun, or an extremely beautiful woman is the occasional exception to the rule that the individual is rarely, simply as an individual, able to alter the variables affecting other people in very important ways. But he may to some extent offset this shortcoming because he is in an especially favorable position in dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the controllee. Organized agencies manipulate variables common to groups of people, but the individual can ask whether a particular controllee is sensitive to certain kinds of stimuli, whether he responds to certain kinds of reinforcement, whether at the moment he exhibits certain states of deprivation, and so on. Whatever variables are available may be more wisely selected and used.
The limitations of personal control have led to a standard practice in which available variables are first manipulated in order to establish and maintain contact between controller and controllee. If this move is successful, further possibilities of control may then be developed. The first task of the salesman is to keep his prospect within range—to keep the housewife at the door or the customer in the shop. If he has sufficient control to achieve this, he may then safely develop other lines. The counselor, whether he is simply a friend or a professional therapist, faces a similar problem. His first task is to make sure that the man he is counseling continues to listen and to return for further counsel. If this can be done, other lines of control may then be opened.
The preliminary stage of maintaining contact with the controllee is best seen in the career of the entertainer or, somewhat less obviously, the writer, artist, or musician. People of this sort exploit their relatively poor sources of control almost exclusively to increase the probability that the controllee will come back for more. The principal technique is reinforcement. We might say, in fact, that it is the business of the entertainer, writer, artist, or musician to create reinforcing events. In the process of creation, as we saw in Chapter XVI, a medium may be manipulated to reveal self-reinforcing properties, but the “universality” of a work of art is measured by the number of other people who also find it reinforcing. If the artist has no further message, this is the extent of the personal control he wields. The propagandist, however, advances to a more specific assignment when the attention, interest, or patronage of his audience has once been assured.
The techniques available in controlling behavior were reviewed in Chapter XV in connection with self-control, but there are several special features which call for comment in the application to the control of others. Physical force is the most immediately effective technique available to those who have the necessary power. In its most immediately personal form it is exemplified by the wrestler who suppresses the behavior of his opponent through sheer physical restraint. The most extreme form of restraint is death: the individual is kept from behaving by being killed. Less extreme forms include the use of handcuffs, strait jackets, jails, concentration camps, and so on. These all suggest violent control, often for extremely selfish purposes, but even highly civilized societies use physical restraint in the control of children, criminals, and the dangerously insane.
The use of force has obvious disadvantages as a controlling technique. It usually requires the sustained attention of the controller. It is almost exclusively concerned with the prevention of behavior, and hence is of little value in increasing the probability of action. It generates strong emotional dispositions to counterattack. It cannot be applied to all forms of behavior; handcuffs restrain part of a man’s rage but not all of it. It is not effective upon behavior at the private level, as we suggest when we say that one cannot imprison a man’s thoughts.
For all these reasons, control through physical restraint is not so promising a possibility as it may at first appear. It is, of course, never available to those who lack the necessary power. In the long run the use of force usually gives way to other techniques which employ genuine processes of behavior. Here the controller need not have the power to coerce or restrain behavior directly but may affect it indirectly by altering the environment.
Manipulating stimuli. Most of the techniques of self-control through the manipulation of stimuli may be directly extended to the behavior of others. We present unconditioned or conditioned stimuli to elicit reflex responses when we give an emetic to induce vomiting; and we arrange discriminative occasions for behavior when we display merchandise in a store in such a way that the customer is more likely to purchase it. We use stimuli to eliminate behavior by evoking incompatible responses. When women employed in a factory created a hazard by hurrying down a corridor at the end of the day, the manager put mirrors along the corridor to evoke responses of adjusting wearing apparel and applying cosmetics. This behavior proved to be incompatible with hurrying. We use supplemental stimuli to induce behavior when we “interpret a situation favorably,” as when the salesman assures the potential buyer that he will enjoy or profit from a purchase, or when we encourage someone to join us on a given occasion by assuring him of enjoyable consequences. A particularly effective mode of stimulation evokes the imitative repertoire discussed in Chapters VII and XIX: the businessman who is resorting to alcohol as a technique of control induces his prospect to have another drink by ordering another himself. The imitative repertoire is the basis of testimonial advertising. People are shown using various products and engaging in various activities, and the effect is to strengthen comparable behavior in the viewer. The whole field of verbal behavior exemplifies the use of stimuli in personal control. The speaker generates auditory patterns which are effective because of the listener’s history in a given verbal community.
Reinforcement as a technique of control. If the individual possesses money or goods, he may use them for purposes of reinforcement in the form of wages, bribes, or gratuities. If he is in a position to do someone a favor, he can reinforce accordingly. He may also be able to offer his own physical labor, either to an employer in return for wages or to a friend in return for a particular action. Sexual stimulation is a common form of reinforcement and is widely used in personal control.
In practice many of these reinforcers are preceded by more immediate conditioned reinforcers. Money is itself a conditioned reinforcer, but primary reinforcement may be further postponed when a check is given which is later converted into cash. Contracts and verbal promises are other forms of conditioned reinforcers available in personal control. Minor examples include praise and thanks. These deferred reinforcements are likely to be unreliable, however. Praise may give way to flattery, checks may not be honored, and promises may be made in bad faith. But it may be some time before the interlocking social system deteriorates to the point at which there is no longer a reinforcing effect.
Aversive stimulation. Negative reinforcement is employed in personal control in the aversive cry of the child and the nuisance value of the behavior of an adult. Control is achieved by making the withdrawal of these aversive stimuli contingent upon the response to be strengthened. Forgiveness and acquittal are similarly reinforcing. The bully who pommels another boy until he cries “Uncle!”, the police who employ the third degree to obtain a confession, and the nation which makes war until the enemy surrenders, exemplify the same use of aversive stimulation. Conditioned aversive stimulation used in the same way is exemplified by the “dare” or by other ways of shaming someone into acting.
Punishment. The individual who is able to present a positive reinforcement or withdraw a negative is usually also able to present the negative or withdraw the positive and is therefore able to punish. Punishment is not to be confused with physical restraint or the use of aversive stimulation. All three forms of control are usually available to the same individual because of the nature of the power of control, but confining a man in jail to keep him from behaving in a certain way or to induce him to behave in a certain way in order to be released is not the same as confining him in order to reduce his tendency to behave in a given way in the future. In the control of psychotic patients confinement is a means of restraint rather than punishment; and, conversely, some forms of punishment involve at best only momentary restraint. Punishment as a technique of control has all the disadvantages of physical restraint and, in addition, all the weaknesses pointed out in Chapter XII. Moreover, it generates emotional dispositions which may be disadvantageous or even dangerous to both controller and controllee, as we shall see in discussing psychotherapy in Chapter XXIV.
Punishment as the removal of positive reinforcers, conditioned or unconditioned, is exemplified by cutting a dependent off “without a cent,” refusing to supply food or shelter previously given, imposing economic sanctions, and refusing customary sexual contact. Another important example is withholding customary social stimulation, as in snubbing an acquaintance or “putting a schoolboy on silence.” Lesser degrees of such punishments are social neglect and inattention. None of these are punishments in their own right, but only when made contingent upon behavior.
Punishment in the form of presenting aversive stimuli is commoner. Physical injury is exemplified by spanking a child, striking an adult, and attacking a nation. Conditioned aversive stimuli, many of them verbal, are exemplified by disapproval and criticism, by damning and cursing, by ridicule, and by the carrying of bad news. These again are punishments only when contingent upon behavior. We have seen that it is questionable whether they permanently reduce any tendency to behave. They all generate emotional dispositions which are particularly disorganizing and which may in turn call for further remedial control.
Pointing up contingencies of reinforcement. It is possible to use techniques based upon reinforcement and punishment without being able to control the events in question. A considerable effect may be achieved simply by clarifying the relation between behavior and its consequences. The instructor in sports, crafts, or artistic activities may directly reinforce the behavior he is trying to establish, but he may also simply point up the contingency between a given form of behavior and the result—“Notice the effect you get when you hold the brush this way,” “Strike the key this way and see if it isn’t easier,” “If you swing the club this way, you won’t slice the ball,” and so on. The controller may make use of reinforcing events which have occurred without his intervention by making the contingencies more likely to modify the behavior of the controllee. Punishing consequences are pointed up by such expressions as “Now, see what you’ve done,” “This is costing you money,” or “You are responsible for all this.” Other techniques of emphasizing reinforcing contingencies consist of arranging various schedules of reinforcement—“Play this passage until you can play it without a mistake”—and programs of differential reinforcement—“When you can clear the bar at this height, move it one inch higher.”
Deprivation and satiation. If we are controlling a child’s behavior through reinforcement with candy, it is well to make sure that little candy is received at other times. Deprivation may also be used to control behavior which has been strengthened by generalized reinforcers. To evoke behavior which has been reinforced with money, one procedure is to deprive the individual in such a way as to strengthen behavior which can be executed only with money. For example, a man is made susceptible to bribery by encouraging him to follow a mode of living in which money is an important requirement. Satiation is a common technique of control which is particularly effective in eliminating unwanted behavior. A child stops teasing for candy when he is given all he will eat. One may satiate an aggressor by submitting to him—by “turning the other cheek.”
Emotion. We are sometimes interested in controlling the reflex responses characteristic of emotion, as in making someone laugh, blush, or cry. We are more likely to be interested in establishing emotional predispositions. We have noted the important case in which someone is “favorably inclined” toward a particular person or set of circumstances. Building morale is usually concerned with generating such a predisposition. The effect often follows from the same events which reinforce behavior. Gratuities, for example, serve as a mode of control not only through reinforcement but by generating “favorable attitudes.” More specific predispositions are also generated with appropriate stimuli—as when Christmas music is played in a store to encourage “good will toward men” and the purchase of gifts. Other techniques of altering emotional predispositions are suggested by terms like “jollying,” “cajoling,” “haranguing,” “seducing,” “inciting,” “allaying fear,” and “turning away wrath.” The actual variables responsible for a given predisposition need to be analyzed in each case.
The use of drugs. The drug most commonly used in personal control is alcohol. Like certain emotional operations it is often used to dispose an individual toward favorable action. It appears also to act directly in reducing anxieties or alarm and may be used for that reason—for example, in closing a business deal or in getting someone to talk about a confidential matter. It is also used as a positive reinforcer. As a habit-forming drug it makes possible a special form of deprivation, in which behavior which has been reinforced with alcohol may be made so powerful that the individual will “do anything” for a drink. Such drugs as morphine and cocaine have, as we have seen, been used to create the possibility of using other powerful deprivations for the same purpose. Other drugs are employed in the control of psychotic behavior and in connection with governmental or police functions—for example, the so-called truth serums.
Students of human behavior often avoid the issue of control and even regard it as in bad taste to suggest that deliberate control is ever undertaken. The codification of controlling practices is left to the Machiavellis and Lord Chesterfields. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists usually prefer theories of behavior in which control is minimized or denied, and we shall see that proposed changes in governmental design are usually promoted by pointing to their effect in maximizing freedom. All this appears to be due to the fact that control is frequently aversive to the controllee. Techniques based upon the use of force, particularly punishment or the threat of punishment, are aversive by definition, and techniques which appeal to other processes are also objectionable when, as is usually the case, the ultimate advantage to the controller is opposed to the interest of the controllee.
One effect upon the controllee is to induce him to engage in countercontrol. He may show an emotional reaction of anger or frustration including operant behavior which injures or is otherwise aversive to the controller. Such behavior may have been reinforced by the reduction in similar aversive consequences. The importance of reinforcement is seen in the fact that we are much more likely to respond in this way to social than to nonsocial control. If we are forced to step off the sidewalk by a large branch blown down by the wind, we shall probably not exhibit a strong emotional reaction, but if we are forced to step off in the same way by a group of idle people, aggressive behavior—verbal and nonverbal—may be generated. The aggressive behavior has probably alleviated similar social conditions but has had little or no effect upon branches of trees. It is not necessarily more “natural” to react emotionally to social than to nonsocial restraint.
Because of the aversive consequences of being controlled, the individual who undertakes to control other people is likely to be counter-control by all of them. The power which “other people” generate when they act as a group is discussed in Chapter XXI. Part of such countercontrol is assigned to specific religious or governmental agencies which possess the power to manipulate important variables. The opposition to control is likely to be directed toward the most objectionable forms—the use of force and conspicuous instances of exploitation, undue influence, or gross misrepresentation—but it may extend to any control which is “deliberately” exerted because of the consequences to the controller. As a result of the principal technique employed in countercontrol, the individual who engages in control automatically generates conditioned aversive self-stimulation—he “feels guilty” about exerting control. He is then automatically reinforced for doing something else, for giving up any attempt to control, and for declaring himself opposed to personal control in general.
The countercontrol exercised by the group and by certain agencies may explain our hesitancy in discussing the subject of personal control frankly and in dealing with the facts in an objective way. But it does not excuse such an attitude or practice. This is only a special case of the general principle that the issue of personal freedom must not be allowed to interfere with a scientific analysis of human behavior. As we have seen, science implies prediction and, insofar as the relevant variables can be controlled, it implies control. We cannot expect to profit from applying the methods of science to human behavior if for some extraneous reason we refuse to admit that our subject matter can be controlled. The advantage of this general principle is well illustrated by the present point: those who are most concerned with restricting personal control have most to gain from a clear understanding of the techniques employed.