preview

Case Study Changing Behavior

Good Essays

Changing Behavior Case Study Analysis
Baker College – PSY111 Seminar 3

Changing Behavior Case Study Analysis
A client approached me because he has a serious problem with procrastination. My client has procrastinated most activities that were not comfortable or enjoyable for as far back as he can remember. Procrastinated activities include but are not limited to paying bills, doing homework assignments, making progress on assigned projects in the office, buying presents for birthdays or holidays and scheduling just about anything. Due to this undesirable behavior my client has lost a few jobs, failed out of school and is behind on his mortgage. Of all of these activities my client would like assistance with procrastination as it …show more content…

The repeated pairing of the stress from arguing while paying bills strengthened the desire to avoid the situation resulting in the habitual behavior problem of procrastination. Had the stress from arguing occurred only occasionally over bills, also known as intermittent pairing (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013), then it may have been less likely that my client would procrastinate his bill paying.
In this scenario you could compare my client’s procrastination with the results from Pavlov’s experiment with his dogs. Pavlov’s experiment measured how much his dogs would salivate when food was introduced. The food and salivation were the unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response respectively. Pavlov also rang a bell each time he fed the dogs. After some time Pavlov noticed that his dogs would salivate when the bell rang even if there was no food present. In this way the bell became the conditioned stimulus that elicited the conditioned response of the dogs salivating. (Morris, C., & Maisto, 2013)
Operant Conditioning:
If we look at my client’s behavior from the perspective of operant conditioning then we have to determine if there were reinforcers or punishers that affected the desired, or undesired, behavior. To explain how operant conditioning could cause procrastination we first need to define reinforcers and punishers. In Operant conditioning a reinforcer is some sort of stimulus that is introduced after the desired behavior that

Get Access